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THE BEACON PRESS PUBLICATIONS 
IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


THE BEACON COURSE 
OF GRADED LESSONS 


William I. Lawrance 
Florence Buck 


Editors. 























































































' ■. 


























































































FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 




FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


BY 

ELEANOR WOOD WHITMAN 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 

THE BEACON PRESS 
25 BEACON STREET 
BOSTON, MASS. 




:b6 

SAfS 


Copyright, 1923 , by 
THE BEACON PRESS, Inc. 


All rights reserved 


*•> w 
9 j * 

* *i^ 


OCT -9 1923 


PRINTED IN U. S. A. 


©C1A7G0257 

AA * 






To 

“JOHN AND BERTA” 

typical child lovers of stories 
now passing on 

to the joy of reading books for themselves 







EDITORS’ PREFACE 


The Old Testament lends itself in a marked 
degree to dramatic presentation. While there are 
no dramas in that body of literature, dramatic ele¬ 
ments abound. It is significant that the earliest 
fragments embedded in the ancient texts are 
snatches of songs, that their highest utterances, in¬ 
cluding not only the Psalms and Job but the more 
notable sayings of the prophets, are poetical in 
form, and that their narrative, wherever it turns 
upon what passed between man and man, is set 
forth in the form of direct conversation. 

This dramatic character of Hebrew literature 
and life has been utilized by Mrs. Whitman in her 
book, From Desert to Temple. She has visual¬ 
ized the Old Testament story as a drama, and has 
wisely appealed, by her treatment of the material, 
to the dramatic instinct so strongly marked in later 
childhood and early adolescence. The use of this 
book by pupils approximately twelve years old 
should make real to them these ancient “ people of 
God,” instruct and quicken their developing minds 
in religious history and expression, and serve as a 
valuable introduction to the Gospel story. 

The plans for the Beacon Course in Religious 
Education have from the first included the publica- 

ix 


X 


EDITOR’S PREFACE 


tion of three books dealing solely with the Bible and 
intended for pupils twelve, thirteen and fourteen 
years of age. The second of these, Dr. Florence 
Buck’s The Story of Jesus , was first completed 
and has now for several years taken a foremost 
place among church-school manuals. The third in 
the series, Miss Helen Nicolay’s Peter and Paul 
and Their Friends, appeared later and has al¬ 
ready gained favor as an introduction to the Apos¬ 
tolic period. Mrs. Whitman’s book, From Desert 
to Temple, here ottered, covers the Old Testa¬ 
ment history and literature. Thus the group of 
manuals presenting the Bible as a whole to students 
during these highly important years has reached 
completion. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Rev. Edwin 
Fairley, a member of the staff of the Department 
of Religious Education, for editorial assistance in 
the preparation of this book. In his reading of the 
manuscript he has made many valuable suggestions. 
Our thanks are also due to Professor Theophile J. 
Meek, of Bryn Mawr College, for his careful reading 
of the work and his assistance in bringing its teach¬ 
ings into accord with the most recent developments 
in this field of study. 


The Editors. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


Every nation has a beginning and a long in¬ 
teresting time of growth just as every hero has. A 
nation is a group of people who have lived together 
and learned to love the same things. We can then 
tell the story of a nation just as we can tell the story 
of a hero. 

The story of the Hebrews is important because, 
in the midst of difficulties, great ideas grew up 
among them which they have given to the world. 
Every great nation has given some gift to the world. 
Indeed, a nation might be called a people united 
around a central idea, and a great nation is one 
whose history is centered around a great idea. The 
Romans gave the world highly developed law; the 
Greeks, our loftiest standards of art. It was some¬ 
thing quite different that the Hebrews gave—a high 
idea of God, the Father of all peoples. 

But they did not start with this God-idea. We 
shall see it grow up among them through the work 
of many leaders. Then we shall see it carefully kept 
and heroically defended by others. 

Today the whole world is indebted to the Hebrew 
people for their gift, the knowledge of one God, the 
Father of all. 


xi 









. 
























' 








. 






















. 




















' 
































CONTENTS 


Editors* Preface 
Author’s Preface 
Introduction . 


PAGE 

ix 

xi 

xvii 


CHAPTEE 

I. 

Childhood and Joy . 


II. 

Wandering and Sorrow . 


III. 

Seeking a New Home . 


IY. 

Israel Victorious .... 


Y. 

Israel a Kingdom .... 


YI. 

The Glory of Solomon 


VII. 

The Kingdom Divided . 


VIII. 

Elijah the Prophet and Ahab the King 

IX. 

New Forces in Israel . 


X. 

Amos, the Shepherd . 


XI. 

Hosea and Israel’s Doom . . 


XII. 

Isaiah and Judah .... 


XIII. 

The Tragic Choice Made by a King . . 

XIV. 

Isaiah’s Wonderful King . . 


XV. 

Micah the Farmer .... 


XVI. 

Jerusalem Delivered 


XVII. 

Jerusalem Becomes Holy . 


XVIII. 

Dark Days for Judah . 


XIX. 

A Voice in the Darkness . 

• • • 

XX. 

The Finding of the Law-book 

• • • 


xiii 


. 15 
. 26 
. 36 

. 47 

. 58 

. 65 

. 76 

. 89 

. 100 
. 110 
. 119 
. 127 
. 133 
. 140 
. 146 
. 153 
. 162 
. 170 
. 178 
. 185 










XIV 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. Jeremiah’s Challenge to Judah .... 192 

XXII. A Prophet on Trial.199 

XXIII. Judah’s Punishment Begins.205 

XXIV. Jeremiah, the Savior of Judah.211 

XXV. Ezekiel. 218 

XXVI. The Holy City is Destroyed. 224 

XXVII. Judah Goes to School in Captivity . . . 232 

XXVIII. Judah a Light to the Nations.239 

XXIX. The “Remnant” Rebuilds the Temple . . . 246 

XXX. Nehemiah the Rebuilder of Jerusalem . . 251 

XXXI. Attempts to Gain New Freedom .... 259 
XXXII. The Growth of an Imperishable Hope . . . 267 

XXXIII. The Hebrews Give their Ideals to the World 275 








MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 


Map of Bible Lands 


Inside front cover 


PAGE 


A Desert Scene.15 

An Oasis. 22 

The Temple of Solomon.65 






Map of Palestine 


Inside back cover 











A DESERT SCENE 







CHAPTER I 


CHILDHOOD AND JOY 

Long ago the Hebrew people were wandering 
tribes in the desert. A tribe might be called the 
seed out of which a nation grows. It is a child- 
nation because in the tribe the people are learning 
to live, work, and play together as they must if they 
are to become a great nation. 

The cradle of the Hebrew child-nation was prob¬ 
ably the peninsula of Arabia . 1 Here were vast 
tracts of level sand broken by sharp ridges and 
rocky mountains. For miles and miles there was 
nothing growing in the sand but little dry shrubs, 
and the mountains were hard to climb and barren. 
How could a child-nation live in so desolate a place ? 
Ah, there was one thing that relieved the still white¬ 
ness of the desert then as now—the oasis. Do you 
know what makes an oasis? It is the bubbling up 
of a living spring of water in the midst of the sand. 
The water gives life to trees and grass. The date 
palm was the tree that men most longed to see for 
it bore under its broad spreading leaves the deli¬ 
cious and nourishing dates. Little wonder is it that 
the early Hebrew tribes did not make their home in 
one settled place in the desert, but wandered from 

1 See map, noting how close Arabia is to Palestine, 

15 


16 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


oasis to oasis where the date palms grow. How 
beautiful against the horizon must have looked 
those stately palms when the caravans had been 
traveling for many days through the hot barren 
sand! 

Is it surprising that they may have thought of the 
palm tree as a beautiful goddess? And the spring, 
too, seemed a gift of the goddess who graciously 
gave refreshing waters to men. We are fortunate 
in having in our Bible a song which some of these 
people sang long ages ago, to express their joy at 
the finding of a spring: 

Song of the Well 

Spring up, 0 well, 

Sing ye unto it! 

Well which the princes have dug, 

Which the nobles of the people have delved 
With their staves and with the scepter. 

Out of the desert a gift! 1 

See what a vivid picture this gives us of this 
early tribe. Across the desert comes the caravan. 
At the head are the camels, on the first one of which 
rides the sheik with his bright-colored turban. On 
the others are some of the older women and men 
carrying the great black rolls of the tents. The 
younger people are walking, driving the sheep and 
the goats. The burning sun has parched their 
tongues; their eyes are fixed on the green of the 

i Num. 21: 17, 18. Tlie last line of the song is another transla¬ 
tion of the words. “From the wilderness to Mattanak” (gift). 


CHILDHOOD AND JOY 17 

palms, for they know that where palms grow there 
must be water. 

At last the oasis is reached and the people fall 
with joy and prayer under the grateful shade of the 
trees. Soon the young men discover the spring and 
shout with joy. But the desert sand storms have 
choked it with sand, which must be dug out before 
the people can drink. But no one must rashly dis¬ 
turb the sacred water, for is it not the gift of the 
god of the oasis? 

Solemnly all gather round the spring; out steps 
the sheik and waves his scepter, saying: 

Spring up, 0 well! 

Turning to the people he cries, 

Sing ye unto it! 

With dry throats they shout the words of the sheik, 

Spring up, 0 well! 

Then the sheik puts in his staff, after which the 
young princes of the tribe come forward with their 
staves and eagerly dig out the sand. Ah, there 
comes the clear water bubbling through! As they 
kneel reverently looking into the spring, the dis¬ 
turbed sand settles and there is clear beautiful 
water for all. Eagerly they drink and then, rising, 
look around at their new home. 

The tents are taken down from the camels ’ backs 
and set up. Soon a little black tent city stands 
around the palm trees. After a night of rejoicing 


18 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


and rest, work begins in the new home. The men 
and boys go out to find the best grass for the sheep 
and goats, and to explore the oasis, looking for wild 
animals and roots and fruits for food. The women 
and girls unpack their wool and twist it into yarn 
with their hands, ready to weave into blankets and 
cloaks with their little hand looms. If any clay can 
be found near the spring, they also mould pottery 
dishes to hold their goat’s milk and cheese. So gay 
and happy are the girls as they work at their pot¬ 
tery that often they decorate it with bright colors 
which they get from the juices of plants. 

One reason why they thus go to work at once is 
that they must prepare for the tribal feast of thanks¬ 
giving. Their own god has led them across the 
desert, but now they have come into the land of a 
new god, the Baal (lord) of the oasis. There are 
also the goddess of the palm tree and spring and 
other gods of wind and tree and rock to be thanked. 

During the day the men look over the flocks and 
pick out a sheep to be sacrificed, and at night all 
gather around a camp fire. With eagerness they 
watch while the sheik kills the sheep and pours out 
its blood on the sand or on a stone for the Baal of 
the oasis. Then come songs of praise to the god or 
El of the tribe, because he has led them to such a 
friendly land and to the goddess of the spring for 
her gift of water. Finally, the roasted sheep is 
brought forth from the fire and all eat and drink, 
joyously feeling themselves to be brothers and akin 
to the gods who have befriended them. 


CHILDHOOD AND JOY 


19 


There were many feasts kept by these early peo¬ 
ple. Our Sabbath day probably comes from one 
of these ancient feasts. Is it not wonderful to think 
that one day of rest in the week for almost the 
whole world began thousands of years ago in the 
desert? 

Probably the Sabbath came from a feast sacred 
to a moon god. As the people sat in front of 
their tents, they saw the thin crescent of the'new 
moon appear, and night after night as they looked 
up into the starry dome, they saw the moon grow to 
a fulness so bright that it dimmed the camp fires 
in front of their little tent city. The moon seemed 
like one of .their companions. They could not help 
seeing that there were four stages in the coming and 
going of the moon god. The circle grew to half 
and then to full moon, then to half again and slowly 
disappeared. 

Why did the beautiful glowing ball grow so slowly 
to brightness? Perhaps the demons of the desert, 
the jinn, were trying to put her to death. The jinn 
wanted darkness for their bad deeds. People were 
glad when the moon seemed to be overcoming the 
jinn and said, “Let us have a feast and rejoice .’’ 
Thus they came to have four feasts a month to cele¬ 
brate the moon goddess. Even at the last one, when 
the moon seemed to be going out into darkness, 
they were not sad because they hoped that the moon 
would always come back again and the darkness 
would not overcome her. For many years “new- 
moons” were celebrated in Israel (Isa, I; 14) and 


20 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

the Sabbath grew to be a fixed law. (Ex. 20:8; 
34: 21) 

Another feast which the ancient Hebrew tribes 
kept in the desert was the spring festival. 1 When 
the lambs were born in the springtime there was 
rejoicing for they were new members of the tribe 
and the grass grew green around the spring and 
flowers appeared in their honor. Almost all people 
in the world from the earliest times until now have 
kept a spring festival. At these feasts there was 
singing and dancing and the young men and girls 
expressed their love for each other before the whole 
tribe. 

A harvest festival, too, probably goes back to 
these desert days though they did not often sow the 
seeds themselves. They gathered wild grain and 
fruits such as the figs, olives, dates, bananas. All 
these seemed to be gifts hung on the trees for them 
by gods and goddesses. They felt that they must 
not take them without thanks. 

All this shows how much the people thought about 
gods in those days. Everything that moved showed 
the power of a god. If a stone tumbled down a 
mountain, it was a god traveling across the earth; 
if the wind howled, it was a god speaking, or one 
of the jinn. They were afraid of some of these 
gods, but they felt friendly to most of them. The 
oldest name we know for the God of the Hebrews is 

i Deut. 16, verses 1 and 5 show that the people had kept a spring 
feast at home for many years. This came later to be called the 
Passover feast. 


CHILDHOOD AND JOY 


21 


El, which simply means god. Sometimes they called 
him Elohim, which is the plural of El, because they 
thought him more powerful than any one god. An 
old name for the Hebrew nation is Isra-el which 
means “the god who strives” for his people. 

Besides all these gods, these early people wor¬ 
shiped the spirits of their ancestors. When the 
loved sheik of the tribe died, they saw him struggle 
with his breath and said, “His breath, his spirit, 
has gone away, but he will stay near us.” They 
also dreamed about their dead and so these people 
felt that in the world there were two things, body 
and breath, or as we should say, matter and 
spirit. 

Now we can see how this early tribal life was, 
indeed, the seed out of which the Hebrew nation 
grew. The Hebrews are the people that have given 
to the world the idea of one God, Father of all 
peoples. They did not start with this idea, for in 
the earliest times they thought that there were many 
gods around them, and that one of these was es¬ 
pecially interested in them. This was the seed out 
of which the larger, truer idea of God grew. 

In the rest of the story of this nation, we shall 
watch this seed grow. It will have a hard struggle 
to break through the shell of ignorance and cruelty 
in which it was wrapt in the desert, but we shall see 
new leaves break through and finally'the full grown 
plant,—a nation with an idea of God the Father so 
beautiful that all the world desires it. “Out of a 
people, a gift.” 


22 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

THE FINDING OF THE SPRING 


A Dramatic Scene 
Characters : Sheik of the Tribe 

Sheik’s Wife, Son, and Daughter 
People of the Caravan 

Scene: An oasis in the Arabian desert. Everywhere 
white sand relieved by sparse bits of green and a group 
of palms at one side. 

The effect of a desert may be obtained by putting un¬ 
bleached muslin over the floor and sprinkling some sand on 
it. Greenhouse palms may be used but the palm stalk may 
be painted on pasteboard and the leaves made of green 
paper. The spring should be a pan of water carefully con¬ 
cealed at one spot with sand enough around to be thrown 
out ivith sticks. 

Costumes may be made with little expense from various 
colored cotton materials. Suggestions for color and form 
of costumes may be found in the Tissot or other pictures. 

Sheik’s Son: (running ahead of the caravan, staggers 
across to the palm trees ) Water! Water! (He bows in 
oriental attitude of prayer, occasionally lifting his arms 
toward the trees.) 

Sheik: (from distance) 0 Ishtar, we are parched with 
thirst. 

People of the Caravan: 0 Ishtar, water! 

Sheik’s Wife: (appears supported by daughter as she 
feebly stretches out her hands toward palms) Water, 
water, I perish for water. (Sinks from exhaustion.) 
Sheik’s Daughter: (prays) 0 Ishtar, spirit of the palm, 
give of thy living water, lest my mother perish. 

Sheik: (entering, looks at palm and then shouts back to 





BY PERMISSION FROM UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, NEW YORK 

AN OASIS 










CHILDHOOD AND JOY 


23 


caravan)] Leave your camels there. Here is hope. 
Voices of the Caravan: (near at hand) Water! Water! 

(Sheik takes attitude of prayer while members of the 
caravan enter showing signs of exhaustion from thirst.) 
Sheik*, (prays) 0 Ishtar, thou Queen of the Desert, give 
of thy liquid life to revive my sons and daughters. Ever 
will they praise thee. 

(People of the Caravan respond by taking the attitude 
of prayer, the men bowed to earth and the women standing 
with hands outstretched toward trees.) 

Son of Sheik : Show me, 0 glorious one, the source of 
thy beauty, that it may bring life to the people. (Rises 
and carefully examines green places in the sand. At one 
he takes courage and begins to dig, with hope in his face, 
while all eagerly watch him. Hope changes to despair as 
no water is found.) Here are signs of water, yet the god¬ 
dess hides it far beneath the sand. (People of caravan 
show signs of despair.) 

Daughter of Sheik : 0 beautiful palm, wilt thou let us 

die ? 

Sheik’s Wife: (almost dying) My throat is hot; this is 
the taste of death. 

(Sheik picks up robe upon which he has been praying 
and rushes to wife’s side.) 

Son of Sheik '.(seeing green spot where father’s robe has 
been) What is this? (Looks, listens, digs into sand.) 
Yea, here is water; the Queen of the Desert presents her 
gift; come. 

Sheik: (comes quickly with scepter and waves it over the 
spring) Spring up, 0 well; spring up, 0 well. (To the 
people) Sing ye unto it. 

People of Caravan: Spring up, 0 well; spring up, 0 
well. 


24 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Sheik: Come forward, ye princes, and dig out the sand. 
Come ye nobles of the people and delve with your staves. 
(Throws out sand with scepter. Others work with staves, 
while all watch breathlessly.) Ah, at last water, life-giv¬ 
ing water. (Dips his hand into the spring and holds it up 
dripping.) Out of the desert a gift. Come, drink. 

(Daughter takes queer piece of pottery out of sack, 
scoops up water and takes it to her mother.) 

(Funny old shepherd, famished, throws himself in front 
of others and puts head into spring. He is pulled out, 
struggling, while others dip up water and give to older 
men and women. At last all have secured a taste of water 
and show signs of relief and joy.) 

Daughter of Sheik: (as she sees her mother revive, skips 
forth joyously) 

Now returns joyous life, 

Gladness comes once more; 

0 Desert Queen, accept our thanks 
For the glorious gift of life. 

People of the Caravan: (extending hands toward palm) 
Thanks to thee for life. 

Sheik: (looking up toward sky) 

And to thee, 0 mighty El, 

For guiding thy tribe 

To the land of the beauteous palm. 

(To the people) 

Sing, sing to the praise of the spring 
Whence issues life for all. 

People of the Caravan : Life and joy for all. (To son) 
Sing us the song of the well. 


CHILDHOOD AND JOY 


25 


Son of Sheik: 

Spring up, 0 well, 

Sing ye unto it, 

Well which the princes have dug, 

Which the nobles of the people have delved 
With their staves and with the scepter,— 

Out of the desert, a gift. 

Sheik: The camels, shall they not also have water? 

(Several men run off for camels.) Bring now your tents 
and your tools and make us a home in the desert. {All 
run off to bring their belongings.) 

Sheik: (left alone, lifts his hands in prayer) 

All ye gods of earth and air, 

To you be thanks and praise. 


CHAPTER II 

WANDERING AND SORROW 

Life was not always so beautiful for the early 
tribes which afterwards made the Hebrew nation 
as it was when they were settled peacefully around 
the spring of an oasis. 

One day, let us suppose, the noise of another 
thirsty tribe was heard approaching. Hastily the 
men were called to be ready to meet them. In fierce 
tones and a strange dialect the newcomers demanded 
the spring. Water to refresh themselves they might 
have, replied the sheik of the Hebrews, but not the 
spring itself. Then came battle, the newcomers 
shouting that the spring was theirs because they 
had been there before. With sticks and stones and 
arrow heads they fought in deadly conflict. Then 
it was that Lamech, one of these early people, 
brought forth a new and deadly instrument—the 
sword. 

With this sharp metal he struck dead at a blow a 
man who had wounded him. Slashing on with this 
terrible knife, he soon brought victory to the He¬ 
brews, and the newcomers begged for mercy, prom¬ 
ising to move on the next day if only water were 
given them. Then the Hebrews, as eager in hos¬ 
pitality as in war, called for their women to bring 

26 


WANDERING AND SORROW 


27 


water and food. One law in the mind of all desert 
peoples has always been this: we are bound to be 
true to anyone whom we have fed. The newcomers 

could, therefore, be fed and treated as friends till 
morning. 

Lamech became the hero of the hour and sang 
a song of victory to his two wives. This song is 
one of the oldest passages that we have in our 
Bible: 


The Song of the Sword 

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, 

Ye wives of Lamech, listen to my speech; 

For I have slain a man for wounding me, 

A young man for hurting me. 

If Cain was avenged seven times, 

Lamech shall be avenged seventy times seven. 

(Gen. 4:23, 24) 

A savage old song this is with its desire for seven¬ 
fold revenge. But the desert people had no writ¬ 
ten laws to set things right and felt that they must 
threaten terrible punishment upon all who dared 
do wrong. They fought and believed that El, their 
god, gave them victory. 

Now the love of travel and the desire for more 
possessions began again to move these people. The 
dates from the palms had all been gathered, the 
wild grain of the oasis had all been harvested. Why 
stay longer around the spring, when there were 
stores enough to take them on a long journey? Why 
not travel to that far away land by the two great 


28 'FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

rivers, where wonderful things could he bought in 
the bazaars? 

With eagerness camels were loaded with stores 
of grain and fruit, and the tribes set forth, driving 
their sheep and goats before them. North and east 
they took their way and came, after many days, to 
the city of Ur of the Chaldees, sacred to the moon- 
god. The city offered many good things in ex¬ 
change for their wool and sheep, but it could not 
bind these true desert people, for above all else they 
loved freedom. They would rather be free than 
have fine things. So again they journeyed north¬ 
ward to the land of Aram, in which was the city of 
Haran. 

This is the way the Bible tells the story, using the 
name “Abram,” because this means Father of the 
People, and stands for the tribe: 

And Terah took Abraham his son . . . and they went 
forth . . . from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land 
of Canaan: And they came unto Haran and dwelt there. 
(Gen. 11:31) 

Haran belonged to the kingdom of Babylonia. 
Here ruled a great king Hammurabi, whose picture 
has come down to us on the great stele on which 
his laws were cut. He was one of the earliest law¬ 
makers we know. The Hebrew tribes must have 
known of Hammurabi, but they did not want to live 
under his laws. For many years, however, they 
wandered about on the edges of his kingdom, add¬ 
ing many new people to their tribe. 


WANDERING AND SORROW 


29 


We have two ways of finding out about people in 
that long ago time: first, from the writings of the 
Babylonian people who lived between the two great 
rivers and, second, from the later writings of the 
Hebrews themselves. Do you know how the people 
of the two rivers wrote? On clay tablets which 
they baked in the sun. They took the clay of their 
land and moulded it in their hands, as children 
make mud pies. While it was soft they wrote on it 
with a pointed stick or piece of metal and put it out 
in the sun to dry. 

Many of these clay tablets have been dug up out 
of the sand. Thousands of them had been laid on 
shelves in buildings just as we put books in libra¬ 
ries. Scholars in Europe and America are today 
deciphering these tablets which are much older than 
the writings of the Hebrews. 

Several of these clay tablets written just before 
the end of the reign of king Hammurabi use the 
name of Jacob-el which seems to imply that the 
Hebrew tribes lived there at one time, where 
they may have added to their number the Jacob 
tribe. 

About two hundred years later in the same region, 
we find also the name of Abraham on a clay tablet. 
This tells us that one Abraham hired an ox and 
leased a farm and had a record made that he had 
paid his rent. This is not the Abraham of the 
Bible, but the use of the name shows that it was not 
uncommon in that country. The name Abraham 
may mean Father of his People, and may have been 



30 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


here given to the sheik of one of the Hebrew tribes. 
Or perhaps the Abraham tribe here joined the He¬ 
brews. You see the Hebrews are gathering more 
and more people as they go. Like a snowball, they 
are rolling up people who will afterwards make a 
nation. 

More than anything else, all these people loved 
travel. Stories had come to them of the beautiful 
land of Canaan over by the Great Sea, as the Med¬ 
iterranean Sea used to be called. To this far away 
land the Hebrews set out, now composed of several 
tribes with the Abraham tribe leading. That they 
are the same kind of people that we have come to 
know in the desert is shown by the fact that they 
still worshipped trees and springs and stones. 

The Hebrew writings in the Bible tell us that 
Abraham “ moved his tent, and came and dwelt by 
the oak of Mamre,” (Gen. 13:18) that is, oak of div¬ 
ination. Divination means the attempt to find out 
the will of a divinity or god. Outside of the desert it 
is the oak tree instead of the palm tree that is con¬ 
sidered sacred. From the leaves of the oak, peo¬ 
ple tried to “divine” the will of the divinity. 
Abraham went there probably to ask the god of the 
oak tree for water and food, although he expected 
his own god to guide him on his journeys. 

Abraham visited also a well called the Well of the 
Seven, or Beersheba. Probably he led the tribes 
in singing the song of the well before using the 
sacred water. The old story says that he planted 
a tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of 


WANDERING AND SORROW 


31 


Yahweh. (Gen. 21: 33) Early desert tribes also 
regarded stones as the abiding places of gods, and 
we have a story coming from the Jacob tribes which 
illustrates this. Jacob, it is said, came to Beth-el 
(House of El) and passed the night there because 
the sun had set. 

“And he took one of the stones which were there, and 
put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. 
Then he dreamed and saw a ladder set up on the earth 
with its top reaching to heaven; and, behold, the mes¬ 
sengers of El were ascending and descending on it. And 
he was filled with awe and said, How awful is this place: 
this is none other than the house of El, and this is the 
gate of heaven. So Jacob rose up early in the morning, 
and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set 
it up for a pillar and poured oil upon the top of it. And 
Jacob made a vow saying, if El be with me and take care 
of me in this journey which I am making, and give me 
bread to eat and clothing to put on, and I return safe and 
sound to my father’s house, then shall El be my God and 
this stone which I have set up for a pillar, shall be a house 
of El. (Gen. 28:11-22.) 

This story, written long afterwards by the He¬ 
brews, shows that they did not forget the early days 
when the gods of the stones and trees and springs 
were gracious to them in Canaan. Indeed, Beth-el 
was for many centuries a special place of worship. 
Not only does the Bible give accounts of these early 
times, but we have writings of the Egyptians also 
which tell us about the Hebrews in Canaan. The 


32 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Egyptians wrote in pictures on their tombs and 
temples. One of these picture-writings tells about 
a king of Egypt who went up into Canaan and 
conquered many cities. One of these he called 
Jacob-ra. Now Ra in Egyptian corresponds to El. 
So you see this is another account of the same Jacob 
tribe in Canaan. Another city he called Joseph-ra 
and the Hebrew writings tell us later of Joseph 
tribes. 

Now Canaan was “a land beautiful and broad, 
a land flowing with milk and honey.’’ (Exodus 

3:8) 

“It was a land of wheat and barley and vines and 
fig trees and pomegranates; a land of oil-olives and 
honey.” ( Deut . 8:8) This is the way the He¬ 
brews described it and it is interesting to compare 
it with an ancient Egyptian writing called: 

V 

The Tale of Sinuhe 

It was a goodly land— 

There were figs in it and vines, 

More plentiful than water was its wine, 

Copious was its honey, plenteous its oil; 

All fruits were upon its trees. 

Barley was there and spelt, 

Without end all cattle. 1 

But all this prosperity in Canaan was suddenlv 

* 

ended by a famine. Palestine has the desert to the 
west and to the south and sometimes the burning hot 

1 Barton, Archeology and the Bible, p. 307. 


WANDERING AND SORROW 


33 


winds come up and kill everything. This or their 
migratory instinct it was, perhaps, that caused a 
great famine, and some of the Abraham and 
Jacob and Joseph tribes moved down to Egypt to 
buy corn. But this journey had a tragic ending. 
The Pharaoh of Egypt, Rameses the Great, decided 
to make them work for him. All over Egypt today 
are colossal statues of this king, and immense build¬ 
ings remaining from the time when he made slaves 
build them. He needed bricks, and he forced the He¬ 
brews to make them for him. 

If you were to visit Egypt today, you would see 
people making bricks just as they used to do. They 
mixed mud with straw and cut it into little cakes 
and let the sun bake it. The straw is to hold the 
mud together. If you do not have straw, the brick 
may crumble and all your work be lost. Now the 
Egyptians forced the Hebrews to make bricks with¬ 
out giving them the straw, and they beat them if 
they could not get as many as they wanted. 

A city named Pithom has been dug out of the sand* 
showing houses built of two kinds of brick, those 
with straw and those without. Probably this is 
one of the very cities that the enslaved Hebrews had 
to build, for the Hebrew writings tell us that they 
built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Rameses. 
(Ex, 1:11). A cartouche or monogram of King 
Rameses in Pithom shows that he was its builder. 

The mummy of old Rameses has also been found, 
as well as that of his successor, Merneptah, who 
fought some Israelites up in Palestine at the 


34 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


same time that he imprisoned others of them in 
Egypt. If yon were to visit the Museum at Cairo 
you could look upon the dried and wrinkled faces of 
the Pharaoh of the “oppression” and the Pharaoh 
of the “exodus.” These very men made slaves of 
the children of Israel. 

How these freedom-loving wanderers did hate 
to work as slaves! Also, they wanted to rejoin their 
brethren in Canaan. Yet they did not know how to 
free themselves, and every day that they worked 
as slaves they became weaker and more despairing. 
It was Moses who arose and encouraged them and 
led them forth. You know the story of Moses, how 
he heard the voice of Yahweh out of a bush on a 
mountain telling him to go and lead the Hebrews 
out of Egypt. A splendid leader he must have been, 
for he led them forth in spite of the opposition of 
Merneptah. 

It was when Moses had led them to the sacred 
mountain that the important thing happened which 
made the Hebrews begin to grow into a great nation 
—it was the making of a covenant with the God, 
Yahweh. Think of these people once more in the 
desert, camped round a majestic mountain. As the 
thunder rolls and the lightning flashes, they feel 
both fear and gratitude to the God, Yahweh. They 
are ready to make a sacred covenant with the 
Kenites, one of whose daughters Moses has married, 
and with the God, Yahweh. This covenant was 
made by a feast, such as we have seen they often 
have in the wilderness. Jethro, the Kenite, was 


WANDERING AND SORROW 35 

the host at the feast because he was a priest of 
Yahweh. When they had eaten, Jethro said, 

Blessed be Yahweh 

Who hath delivered them from the power of Pharaoh; 
Who hath delivered the people from under the power of 
the Egyptians. 

Now I am persuaded that Yahweh is greater than all other 
gods. 

{Ex. 18:10-11) 

The Hebrews do not at this time forget the God 
whom they had called El; they keep their old name 
Israel, but now they say, “Yahweh saved Isra-el 
that day out of the power of the Egyptians.’’ {Ex. 
14:30). 

Now that the Hebrews were free again and had 
secured the promise of Yahweh as their power¬ 
ful helper, was not everything possible! Their 
thoughts turned back to Canaan with high hopes. 
Strengthened by faith in their covenant with Yah¬ 
weh, the people of Israel determined to use their 
freedom to gain a home and a country. Never in 
all their history did Israel forget the kindness of 
their God in leading them forth to liberty. They 
looked back upon it as a marvelous story. One of 
their later prophets expresses the love of God for 
the nation thus: 

When Israel was a child 
Then I loved him 

And called my son out of Egypt. 

{Hos. 11:1) 


CHAPTER III 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 

Leaving the mountain which had now become to 
them a Holy Mountain, the Hebrews once more 
found themselves in the wilderness. They wandered 
freely, seeking water and food as of yore, with Moses 
now as their sheik. 

No longer did they w T ander aimlessly, for during 
all the days of slavery in Egypt they had remem¬ 
bered that land flowing milk and honey where plenty 
could be had with freedom. In Egypt they had 
enjoyed some of the luxuries of that rich land, but 
the bondage had spoiled the pleasure. That some 
of their brethren were still in Canaan, also, is shown 
by the stele or tablet of Merneptali who says that he 
“desolated” Israel there. 1 If only they could find 
the Land of Canaan again, and their brethren, it 
would be better than the fruits of Egypt or the 
manna of the wilderness! 

Moving north they came to the land of the 
Edomites, a wild tribe whose hand was “against 
every man and every man’s hand against him.” 

i On this tablet are these lines— 

Israel is desolated, his seed is not; 

Palestine has become a widow for Egypt. 

See Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 311. 

36 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 


37 


Just east of the end of the Dead Sea they came 
upon the Moabites, who lived in great holes in the 
rocks. Some magnificent rock-cut houses can be 
seen there today. The Hebrews helped these people 
fight some of their battles and learned much from 
them about tilling the soil. 

Passing still farther northward they overcame 
the Amorites, and some of the tribes of the Hebrews 
found land that they decided to hold and learn to 
cultivate. But most of the tribes had their eyes on 
the land beyond Jordan. 

Finally the time came of which they had long 
dreamed, perhaps ever since they had camped in 
Canaan before going to Egypt, when they deter¬ 
mined to go over to make Canaan their home. 
Home was the new idea that had come to the He¬ 
brews. In the desert they had never desired a 
home, but now the world looked different to them; 
they wanted to possess Canaan and plant the grain 
and gather the grapes and live in houses. 

Down from the heights to the east of the Jordan 
they poured, crossing the swift flowing river. The 
first city they attacked and took was Jericho, the 
“City of Palms,” a beautiful walled city in the 
valley with plenty of running water and magnificent 
palms. So overjoyed were the Hebrews to gain 
the beautiful city that afterwards they told stories 
about taking it by marching around it and seeing the 
walls fall down as they blew their trumpets. This 
does not seem so long ago because we can see the 
foundations of this city today with its ancient walls. 


38 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


At Jericho travelers can look upon layers of cities 
and can tell when the Hebrews came and went by the 
kind of brick and stone work they did. 

From Jericho the different Hebrew tribes spread 
out like a fan, going up over the steep hills of the 
west slope of the valley to take different cities. 
How frightened the people were over the coming of 
the hordes from the desert we know from some an¬ 
cient letters. These were found in Egypt at a lit¬ 
tle village called Tel El Amarna. Here is part of 
a letter from the king of Jerusalem, Ebed-Hepa, to 
his Egyptian lord, asking him to send mercenary 
soldiers at once to help against the Habiri who are 
taking all the land. These Habiri may have been 
the Hebrews, or a similar tribe. 

i. 

To the king, my lord, speak, saying, Ebed-Hepa, thy 
servant—at the feet of my lord, the king, seven times and 
seven times I prostrate myself. —Thou dost not hearken 
to me!— May the king turn his face toward mercenaries. 
There are no lands left to the king, my lord. The Habiri 
plunder all the countries of the king. If there are mer¬ 
cenaries in this year then there will be left countries of 
the king, my lord. If there be no mercenaries, the coun¬ 
tries of the king will be lost. Unto the scribe of the king, 
my lord, saying: Ebed-Hepa, thy servant. Take beauti¬ 
ful words to the king, my lord. Lost are the lands of the 
king, my lord. 1 

What became of this unhappy king, we do not 

i Archeology and the Bible, G. A. Barton, p. 346. 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 39 

know, but probably the Ilabiri sacked his city, and 
probably he was shown no more mercy than we read 
that the Hebrews showed to a king of Jerusalem: 

for they chased him from place to place and finally 
they 

caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. 
And Adonizedek said, Seventy kings with their thumbs 
and their great toes cut off, pick up crumbs under my 
table; as I have done, so God hath requited me! And 
they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. 
(■Judges 1:6, 7) 

You see these stories show us that we are still 
studying about the days when there were no laws. 
The old custom of revenge they did know. They 
thought it right to cut off the toes and thumbs of 
the king of Jerusalem, just as he had cut off other 
kings ’ toes. But they did not always live up even 
to this standard of justice. Strange to say, they 
often thought that their god Yahweh helped them 
• to do unfair, deceptive things as the following storv 
shows. 


Story of the Victory of Ehud 

While the Hebrews were gradually getting settled 
in their new land, it seems that the Moabites came 
over and took Jericho and tried to collect tribute 
from all Israel. Then there rose up to fight them, 
Ehud, a left-handed man. He made a present to 
the king of Moab and told him that he wished to 
speak with him alone because he had a message 


40 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

from God for him. Then he stuck a dagger through 
the king’s body and left him to die alone. This 
mean and terrible deed he thought Yahweh liked, 
for he went out and said, “Follow after me! for 
Yahweh hath delivered your enemies, the Moabites, 
into your hand.” (The story is recorded in Judges 
3:12-30) 

In an old part of the hook of Judges, we have 
the strange story of a young man who stole money 
from his mother and gave it back when he heard 
the awful curse she pronounced upon the thief. As 
you read the story, notice how natural it is for them 
to plan to make an image for worship. They did 
not yet know of the commandment , i ‘ Thou shalt not 
make unto thee any graven image.” Notice, too, 
that Yahweh is the one god they think about as their 
own god. 


Story of Micah of Ephraim 

Now there was a man of the hill country of Ephraim 
whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, The 
eleven hundred shekels of silver which were taken from 
you, about which you took an oath, saying it aloud in 
my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; it was I who 
took it. Now therefore I restore it to you. 

And his mother said, Blessed of Yahweh is my son. 
Then he restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver to 
his mother and his mother said, I solemnly consecrate the 
silver to Yahweh from my hand through my son, to make a 
carved and a molten image. 

So. when he restored the money to his mother, his 
mother took two hundred shekels of silver, and gave them 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 41 

to the founder, who made with it a carved and molten 
image; and it was in the house of Micah. And the man 
Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household 
gods, and installed one of his sons who became his priest. 
(■Judges 17:1-5) 

This story makes us wish to ask many questions. 
What kind of image did the man make in his 
foundry? In what shape did he mould Yahweh? 
How could the image be both molten and carved? 
Was it, perhaps, in shape like a man with the body 
of molten metal and the head and hands of carved 
wood? Or was it in shape like a calf such as Israel 
worshiped later? 1 Nobody can answer these ques¬ 
tions because later people were not allowed to make 
images of Yahweh and everybody forgot how they 
used to be made. The household gods (the Hebrew 
name is Teraphim) were probably little images like 
the big one. We do not know what shape the ephod 
was that Micah had in his little shrine, but it was 
something, possibly a linen apron, that he used 
when he made a request of Yahweh. You see this 
story was told long, long ago when people did not 
know that God could not be pictured by an image, 
and need not be given a house in which he should 
be visited if one could not go to his mountain. 

Story of Stealing the Image of Yahweh 

Now a strange thing happened to this image of 
Yahweh. It was stolen and taken on a long journey. 
It happened through a young man that Micah took 

i (I Kings 12: 28, 29.) 


42 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


into the family. This young man was from the 
village of Bethlehem, of the tribe of Judah, and he 
was a “Levite.” This word seems to mean that he 
knew how to act as a priest to Yahweh in his shrine. 
When someone wished to inquire of Yahweh, the 
young man could take the ephod and ask the question 
and get the answer. It was supposed that Levites 
could do this better than other people. Micah, 
therefore, thought it would be a good thing to make 
the Levite priest in place of his son if he could hire 
him. Micah therefore said to him, 

Stay with me, and be a father and a priest to me, and 
I will give you ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit 
of clothes, and your living. 

So the Levite entered into an agreement to dwell with 
the man; and the young man was to him as one of his 
sons. Then said Micah, Now I know that Yahweh will 
prosper me, since I have a Levite as my priest. (Judges 
17:10-13) 

It was this young Levite who caused Micah to 
lose his sacred image. It happened in the following 
way. Down in the south of the country, there lived 
the tribe of Dan. They sent out five ‘ ‘ valiant men ’ ’ 
to the north ‘Ho explore the land” for a home. 

And when they were near the house of Micah, they rec¬ 
ognized the voice of the young man, the Levite; so they 
turned aside there and said to him, Who brought you here ? 
and What are you doing in this place? and What have you 
here? 

And he said to them, Thus and so Micah has done to me 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 


43 


and he has hired me and I have become his priest. And 
they said to him, Inquire of God, will you, that we may 
know whether or not our undertaking shall be successful. 
Then they waited while the Levite went into the shrine and 
took the ephod and consulted Yahweh. When he came 
out he said to them, Go in peace: your undertaking is 
under the care of Yahweh. 

They did not make an offer to the Levite then, 
but they probably saw that he was the kind of priest 
who could.be bought. They may have made their 
plans at once to come back later and steal that 
image and induce the priest to leave Micah. 

The five men went on north to decide where they 
wanted to make their new home and when they came 
back to their kinsmen in the south they were asked, 
“What is your report?” And they said, 

Arise, let us go up against them; we have seen the land, 
and, behold, it is very good, and you are sitting idle. Do 
not delay to go and to enter in to take possession of the 
land. When you go, you will come to a people who sus¬ 
pect no danger, a place where there is no want of anything 
that is on the earth. 1 

Joyfully the people of Dan packed up their things 
and set out for this wonderful land in the north. 
And when they camped one night in the hill country 
of Ephraim near the house of Micah, the five men 
said to them, 

“Do you know that there is in these houses an ephod, 
and household gods, and a carved and a molten image? 

i (Judges 18: 8-10) 


44 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

Now therefore decide what ye will do.” And they turned 
aside there and came to the house of the young man 
the Levite, even the house of Micah, and greeted him. 
Meanwhile the six hundred men, who were of the Danites, 
girded with their weapons of war, stood by the entiance 
of the gate. But the five men who had gone to explore the 
land went up, entered in there, and took the carved image, 
and the ephod and the household gods, and the molten 
image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate 
with the six hundred men who were girded with weapons 
of war. 

Perhaps this implies that the priest let them in 
at the village gate. Probably he knew that they 
wanted the image of Yahweh, but he did not know 
that they would walk right in and take it. When he 
saw them taking the things out of the shrine he said, 

“What are you doing V 9 and they said to him, “Be 
still! Lay your hand upon your mouth, and go with us, 
and be a father and a priest to us! Is it better for you to 
be priest to one man's household, or to be priest to a tribe 
and a clan of Israel V And the priest was glad, and he 
took the ephod, and the household gods, and the carved 
image and went along with the people. 1 

Thus was Micah robbed of his image through the 
unfaithfulness of the Levite priest. 

These robbers had traveled far north before Micah 
discovered his loss and gave chase with some of his 
neighbors, but the insulting Danites shouted hack, 


i (Judges 18 : 18 - 20 ) 


SEEKING A NEW HOME 45 

What is the matter with you that you are out with 
such a crowd ? ’ ’ 

And said Micah, “You have taken away my gods which 
I made, and the priest, and are gone away, and what have 
I left? What do you mean by asking, ‘What is the matter 
with you?’ ” And the Danites said to him, “Do not 
let your voice be heard among us, lest some fierce fellows 
fall upon you and you lose your life, with the lives of your 
household. ” 

Then the Danites went their way; and, since Micah saw 
that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back 
to his house. 

Certainly these Danites were insolent and cruel. 
Pushing on to the fertile country which lies around 
the sources of the Jordan, they 

came to Laish, to a people living in unsuspecting quiet, and 
put them to the sword, and burnt the city with fire. And 
they built the city and dwelt in it, and called the name of 
the city Dan. And the Danites set up for themselves the 
carved image. 1 

How would you like to live as neighbors to Ehud, 
or the people of Dan! The idea makes you shudder, 
because you would not know what horrible thing they 
might be planning when they seemed most friendly. 

It seems a miracle that out of people like these 
God could make a great nation that could teach the 
world about his justice and righteousness. People 
who stick daggers into others while they speak 

i (Judges 18: 27-30) 


46 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


friendly words; people who think there is no harm 
in actually stealing a god to pray to, have a long way 
to travel before they can be a great religious nation. 
This is the miracle of the Hebrew nation and this 
is just the kind of miracle we learn about in the 
Bible stories, the growth of unfair dangerous 
people into splendid, trustworthy people. 

It is a question whether we should call these early 
people wicked, because they did not know any 
better. This was the way that all the desert people 
thought. Perhaps it was because they were not 
actually wicked, but doing the best they knew, 
that God could teach them better ways after a while. 
We shall have the pleasure of watching these primi¬ 
tive Hebrews grow to higher and higher ideas of 
God and life as they become a great nation. 


CHAPTER IV 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 

Victory did not come at once to the Hebrews 
struggling to make homes in Canaan. Often they 
had to give up taking the great fortified cities and 
settle around them. For instance, one account 
says, “And Ephraim drove not out the: Ca- 
naanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites 
dwelt in Gezer among them.” (Judges 1:29) 

We can understand today the difficulty of taking 
a city like Gezer, because we have uncovered its 
ancient walls. They were fourteen feet thick. 
Two carriages side by side might drive on the top 
of them. About every ninety feet there were 
towers twenty-four by forty-one feet at the base. 
Of course we cannot tell how high they were. It 
was certainly wiser for Hebrews who knew little 
about cities not to attack such walls. 

However, many victories came to Israel and 
were all the sweeter because they were hard won. 
Indeed, they rejoiced in them so much that they be¬ 
gan to make songs about them. We have a little 
part of a war song left in the following verse: 

Thou sun stand still in Gibeon, 

And thou, moon, in the valley of Aijalon. 

Then the sun stood still, 

47 


48 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


And the moon stayed 

Until the nation had taken vengeance on its foes. 

(,Joshua 10:12-13) 1 

This celebrates some great battle in the region of 
Gibeon. Apparently victory came just at the set¬ 
ting of the sun, and it seemed to the singer of the 
song so wonderful that the light lasted just long 
enough for them to drive out their enemies, that he 
said the sun stood still to give Israel victory. 

One of Israel’s great victory songs we have com¬ 
plete in our Bible. It comes from the north of Is¬ 
rael and has to do with the people who lived around 
the plain of Esdraelon. This plain was desired 
by all people because its soil is so rich and it is so 
well watered by the many windings of the River 
Kishon. As you enter the plain today on the west 
where the Kishon flows into the Mediterranean 
Sea, Mount Carmel seems to stand straight up like 
a wall on your right. Then looking round you will 
realize that the reason the plain is so fertile is that 
it has many hills and mountains around its edge that 
are continually sending their water in streams into 
it. If you were to stand on one of these mountains 
and look down upon the plain you would feel as 
though you were looking at a variegated velvet car¬ 
pet stretching for miles. The colors differ with the 
season of the year according to the color of the 
grains or flowers that are flourishing. In the early 

i The text used for this song-fragment is from Kent’s Beginnings 
of Hebrew History , p. 272, and his Historical Bible, Vol. II, Founders 
and Rulers of United Israel. 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 


49 


spring all is brilliant with red anemones and cycla¬ 
men; in June ripe grain rolls in waves like a golden 
sea. As the plain of Esdraelon with its mountains 
and rivers is today, so it was in the early days of 
Israel. It is not strange, therefore, that both the 
rulers of Israel and the Kings of Canaan desired 
this beautiful district. The first part of this vic¬ 
tory song shows the readiness of the people to help 
in fighting and their thankfulness to Yahweh for 
victory. 


Israel’s Triumphal Ode 

That the leaders took the lead in Israel, 

That the people volunteered readily, 

Bless Yahweh! 

Hear, O kings, 

Give ear, 0 rulers, 

I myself will sing to Yahweh, 

I will sing praise to Yahweh the God of Israel. 

Yahweh, when thou wentest forth from Seir, 

When thou marchedst from the land of Edom, 

The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, 

Yea, the clouds dropped water. 

The mountains quaked before Yahweh, 

Yon Sinai, before Yahweh the God of Israel. 

(.Judges 5: 2-5) 1 

You cannot read these lines without catching 
their spirit and rejoicing with the singer in the 

i The text of this song is from Kent’s Beginnings of Hebrew 
History, pp. 320-323. 


50 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


coming of Yahweh across the mountains to the help 
of Israel. You see they still think of Yahweh as 
having his home down at the Holy Mountain in the 
desert, but he can come up when Israel needs him. 
His coming is magnificent, like the rolling up of a 
great thunder storm, for Yahweh is the god of the 
desert, the wind, and the rain. 

In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, 

In the days of Jael, the highways were unused, 

And travelers walked by roundabout paths, 

The rulers ceased in Israel, they ceased, 

Until thou, Deborah, didst arise, 

Until thou didst arise a mother in Israel. 

A shield was not seen in five cities, 

Nor a spear among forty thousand. 

(Judges 5: 6-8) 

Here the singer takes us back to a state of things 
before the war. When Shamgar was judge, the 
Canaanites oppressed Israel so sorely that the roads 
were full of robbers. No one could travel except by 
roundabout ways. The roads were closed until 
Deborah arose. Who was Deborah? She was a 
prophetess who inquired the will of Yahweh, not in 
a shrine as did Micah’s priest, but under a palm 
tree. Between Bethel and Ramah this palm tree 
of Deborah stood; under it sat this “mother in 
Israel’’ and gave help to people who asked her ad¬ 
vice. It was, perhaps, in the movement of the 
leaves of the trees that she found signs of Yahweh’s 
will. 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 


51 


Probably the stories that the people told her 
stirred Deborah against the Canaanites. A man 
would come running to her saying that the Ca¬ 
naanites had cut down all his newly ripened grain 
and another that they had taken his corn after he 
had threshed it and prepared it for food. Some 
told her how they had been attacked by robbers 
while they were on the way to visit the prophetess. 
Finally Deborah “ arose ” and sent for Barak to 
come and organize an army against these ma¬ 
rauders. But it was Deborah who stirred up the 
people and the next verses tell us how they came 
to her call. 

My heart is with the commanders of Israel, 

Who volunteered readily among the people; 

Bless Yahweh! 

Proclaim it, you who ride on tawny asses, 

Who sit on rich saddle cloths, 

And you who walk by the way. 

Far from the sound of the division of spoil, 

In the places where water is drawn; 

There let them rehearse the righteous acts of Yahweh, 
Even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel. 

Then the people of Yahweh went down to the gates, crying, 
“ Arise, arise, Deborah, 

Arise, arise, strike up the song! 

Arise, Barak, be strong, 

And take thy captives, thou son of Abinoam!” 

So a remnant went down against the powerful, 

The people of Yahweh against the mighty: 

From Ephraim they rushed forth into the valley, 


52 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Thy brother Benjamin among thy peoples, 

From Machir went down commanders, 

And from Zebulun those who carry the marshal’s staff. 
And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; 

And Naphtali was even so with Barak, 

Into the valley they rushed at his back. 

{Judges 5:9-15) 

Here you can see the tribes of Israel marching 
to battle. Looking at the map you can see how far 
each one had to journey before the day of the attack. 
Perhaps you will not be surprised that those on the 
east of the Jordan, Reuben and Gad, did not come 
at all. Nor will you be surprised that the Danites 
did not care to go to much trouble for their neigh¬ 
bors. The story of their theft of Micah’s idol 
shows that they did not mind treating the Israelites 
unfairly. They were always working for them¬ 
selves, so why should they risk their lives for their 
brothers around their plain? These Danites now 
live up near the people of Tyre who make their liv¬ 
ing in the ships on the Mediterranean Sea. The 
poet heaps scorn upon the Danites for trying to be 
friends with the people of Tyre instead of with their 
own people. Asher, too, settled just south of Dan, 
must afterwards have been ashamed because of the 
contempt in which the poet held them for not help¬ 
ing. Reuben, of course, came in for reproof; he 
was still on the edge of the desert caring for his 
sheep. He knew little about the new life in Canaan 
and there were “ great questionings” as to whether 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 53 

to go to the help of Israel. Here are the words of 
the poet about the different tribes: 

By the brooks of Reuben great were the resolves! 

Why didst thou sit among the slieepfolds, 

Listening to the pipings of the flocks? 

By the brooks of Reuben there were great questionings! 
Gilead remained beyond Jordan. 

And Dan, why does he stay by the ships as an alien? 
Asher sits still by the shore of the sea, 

And remains by its landing places. 

Zebulun was a people who exposed themselves to deadly 
peril, 

And Naphtali on the heights of the open field, 

Bless Yahweh! 

Kings came, they fought; 

They fought, the kings of Canaan, 

At Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; 

They took no booty of silver. 

From heaven fought the stars, 

From their courses fought against Sisera. 

The river Kishon swept them away, 

The ancient river, the river Kishon. 

0, my soul, march on with strength. 

Then did the horse-hoofs resound 

With the galloping, galloping of their steeds. 

(Judges 5: 15-22) 

Now the battle is on; out of the city of Taanach 
down into the plain rush the kings of Canaan in 
their chariots. Sisera, the great Canaanite general, 


54 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


drove forth from his Taanach palace in his fine 
chariot, expecting an easy victory over the Hebrews 
who were only country people without horses and 
chariots. But, as the battle raged, the rumbling of 
the thunder was heard to the south making the 
mountains shake. On came the storm, filling the 
little streams till they ran gushing down into the 
river Kishon, filling its banks and overflowing into 
the plain. Of what use then were the splendid 
chariots of Sisera? The stars in their courses, the 
powers of heaven, the storm clouds were fighting 
on the side of Israel. The galloping, galloping of 
the horses could be heard as they plunged help¬ 
lessly in the mud. 

At last Sisera fled on foot alone. Through the 
village of Meroz he passed and they let him go in¬ 
stead of “coming to the help of Yaliweh against the 
mighty. ” When, however, he stumbled into the 
tent of Jael, the Kenite, she did not let her enemy 
go. But let the poet finish the story: 

Curse Meroz, said the messenger of Yaliweh, 

Curse bitterly its inhabitants; 

Because they came not to the help of Yahweh, 

To the help of Yahweh against the mighty. 

Blessed among women shall Jael be, 

That wife of Heber the Kenite, 

Blessed above all nomad women! 

Water he asked, milk she gave; 

Curdled milk she brought him in a bowl fit for lords. 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 55 

She put her hand to the tent pin, 

Even her right hand to the workman’s hammer; 

And she struck Sisera, she crushed his head, 

She shattered, she pierced his temple. 

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay still, 

At her feet he bowed, he fell; 

Where he bowed, there he fell a victim slain! 

(Judges 5: 23-27) 

Can yon not see JaePs dark Arab face light up 
with terrible purpose as she sees that this worn out 
man before her asking water is her people’s worst 
enemy? How polite and kind she seemed as she 
brought out her finest bowl filled with that most 
refreshing food of the east, curdled milk. Then 
when he buried his head in the bowl, drinking 
eagerly, crash came JaePs hammer or tent pin 
striking him down dead. How disgraceful for a 
warrior to fall down dead at the feet of a woman! 

Then suddenly the poet takes us to the home of an¬ 
other woman, to the palace of Sisera’s mother. 
There up in a tower of the palace in Taanach she 
had long been watching the battle through her lat¬ 
tice window. 

Through the window peered and loudly cried, 

The mother of Sisera, through the lattice, 

Why is his chariot so long in coming? 

Why are delayed the clatter of the hoofs of his scarlet 
horses ? 

The wisest of her ladies answered her, 

Yea, she herself answered her question, 


56 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

“Are they not indeed finding, dividing the spoil? 

A woman or two for each of the warriors; 

For Sisera a spoil of dyed stuffs, 

A spoil of dyed stuffs embroidered, 

A piece or two of embroidery for his neck?” 

(,Judges 5: 28-30) 

From her lattice the mother of Sisera liad seen 
the fighting crowds disappear from the fields during 
the storm. She supposed that the battle was over 
and her son would soon come home to tell her of 
his victory and bring her his prizes as he had often 
done before,— “A woman or two with beautiful 
and embroidered clothes.” But the moments have 
become hours and he has not come. Why? Surely 
they are waiting to divide the booty; Sisera could 
never be defeated. 

Yet there he lies at the feet of Jael, and soon his 
mother must know the truth. The tragedy of her 
sorrow only makes Israel’s victory seem the greater. 
The poet sums up all his faith in Yahweh and vic¬ 
tory in the powerful closing lines of his song: 

So shall all thine enemies perish, 0 Yahweh; 

But they who love him shall be as the sun, rising in its 
invincible splendor. 

(.Judges 5: 31) 

How the song makes us shudder and rejoice! 
Terrible is Jael’s deceitfulness and fury, yet she 
wins a victory for Yahweh. The people of Israel 
now belong completely to Yahweh; now they can be 
sure that they have not left him behind in the desert. 


i 


ISRAEL VICTORIOUS 


57 


They know they can depend upon him to help them, 

and this makes them feel that they must all be true 
to him. 

The writer of this great song of victory, then, did 
much to help make Israel a nation, for every time 
it was sung at a feast it would make the Hebrews 
more loyal to each other and to Yahweh. The deeds 
related in this song are terrible and cruel, but only 
as the Hebrews are true to the ideas of God which 
they already have can he lead them forward and 
show them that he is kinder and greater than they 
thought. 


CHAPTER V 
ISRAEL A KINGDOM 

This splendid story introduces us to two of 
Israel’s great men—Samuel the prophet, and Saul 
the king when he was a young man. Both of these 
men do important work toward making Israel a 
nation. Indeed, it was Samuel the prophet who 
saw that the people of Israel must have a king to 
finish the work of making them all one people. This 
was one reason that Samuel was called a seer, he 
could see things before others had thought of them. 
He saw that the next step in Israel’s becoming a 
nation was to have a king. 

The story of Samuel’s anointing of Saul gives 
us a clear and vivid picture of the way the Hebrews 
were living in their new land. They still had feasts 
as in the days of the desert only they had them on 
the “high places.” The day of the sacrificial feast- 
on the high place was joyous for everybody. 
Samuel was like a father to them. The people 
would not eat a meal until Samuel had asked a 
blessing. Note, too, that the prophets are becoming 
more and more important in Israel. Nor was 
Samuel the only prophet, for a whole band of 
prophets met Saul. Probably they were chanting 
together and Saul joined them in singing songs of 

58 


ISRAEL A KINGDOM 


59 


praise to Yahweh. Saul came back from the search 
for his father’s asses with new hopes—“God gave 
him a new heart. ’ ’ The first thing that he did was 
to go up to the high place at home, there probably 
to pray for guidance. What was he to do? He 
had gone to hunt asses and had found—a king¬ 
dom! 

Soon Saul’s opportunity came; Jabesh-Gilead to 
the east of the Jordan had been attacked. The 
people of Gilead had before come to the help of 
Israel at Taanach; should not the west Jordan tribes 
now help them? As Saul came home from his work 
in the fields one evening, he heard the story and the 
spirit of Yahweh came upon him, filling him with 
determination to stir up Israel to help their 
brothers. Cutting up one of his oxen, he sent 
bloody pieces to the Israelites as a token that it 
was their duty to fight. They followed Saul to 
victory and then made him the first king of 
Israel. 

And all the people went to Gilgal; and there they made 
Saul king before Yahweh in Gilgal; and there they offered 
sacrifices of peace offerings before Yahweh; and there Saul 
and all the men of Israel rejoiced exceedingly. (I Sam. 
11:15.) 

Now, thought the people, King Saul will deliver 
us from our enemy, the Philistines. The Philistines 
were people who had migrated into Palestine much 
as the Israelites had. Perhaps they had come 
across the great sea, the Mediterranean. 


60 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, 
and the Philistines from Caphtor—saith Yahweh? (Amos 

9: 7.) 

There are pictures of some Philistines on a wall 
in a temple of Egypt. They are tall men with up¬ 
standing hair. In Crete too, a disc has been found 
with a picture of a man with such hair. Perhaps 
then, Crete is Caphtor, and it was from there that 
the Philistines came. At any rate it was from some 
such civilized place, for the Philistines knew how to 
build great cities. So powerful they were that Saul 
was not able to overcome them. This' took the 
courage out of him. Then David came into Saul’s 
life, when he came to play upon his lyre to the dis¬ 
couraged king. In time David gradually became 
the one to whom the people looked for help. 

He took up the fight against the Philistines and 
when in battle Saul fell on his sword, David was 
proclaimed chief in the city of Hebron. Then he set 
forth in battle to win the whole land. But he did 
not win his kingdom easily, for there were rebel¬ 
lions against him for many years. During this time 
both David and his enemies did many bloody deeds 
that make us shudder today; for instance, when 
the land had been long needing rain, he hung the 
seven sons of Saul, “In the mountain before Yah- 
weh.” But David thought God wanted him to be 
a warrior and all warriors were cruel in those days. 
Soon he set out on a great conquest in which he 
treated conquered people with horrible cruelty. 


ISRAEL A KINGDOM 


61 


Thus he made all the country around a part of Israel. 

In a few years the little kingdom had more than 
doubled its extent. It reached from the Lebanon 
mountains and Damascus on the north down through 
Arabia to the Red Sea on the south; from far out 
in the desert on the east to the Mediterranean Sea 
on the west, except a strip which the Philistines 
still held. All this made one far reaching kingdom, 
of Israel. 

Not only did David give Israel new land, but a 
new and imposing capital. The city of Jerusalem 
was built on a tongue of rock extending out into 
deep valleys. The Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe, had 
held the city all the years since the coming of the 
Hebrews. It was hard to take the city because it 
was a natural fortress. Soldiers could not climb 
up on the east, south, or west, and of course the sol¬ 
diers in the city fought any who tried to come in 
from the north. The Jebusites laughed at David 
and shouted, 

“You shall not come in here, but the blind and 
the halt shall turn you away.” But David sur¬ 
prised them by making his men crawl into the open¬ 
ing of the spring and up through a rock-cut tunnel 
into the city. Henceforth this Mount Zion became 
known as the “City of David. ” Here he planned 
a great palace decorated with cedar sent down by 
Hiram of Tyre. 

David then had risen from a shepherd boy tending 
the flocks of his father to be ruler of a great king¬ 
dom. He made Israel a unified nation. Before 


62 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


David, Israel was a loosely bound group of tribes; 
through him they became one organized people with 
the same love for Israel and the same trust in 
Yahweh. 

But all this was not done merely by killing Israel’s 
enemies and taking much land. It was really done 
more by love than by force, for people loved David, 
and would gladly risk their lives for him. Once 
David said, “ Oh that I had some water to drink 
from the well that is by the gate of Bethlehem.” 
Although Bethlehem was then in the hands of the 
Philistines, three of David’s men cut their way 
through the enemy, and got some water from the 
well. But when they brought it to David, he would 
not drink it, for it seemed to him like drinking the 
blood of the men who had risked their lives to get 
it, so he poured it out as an ottering to Yahweh. 
David seems to have carried an ephod with him 
and through it to have asked Yahweh’s advice before 
undertaking anything. For instance, in I Sam. 23: 
9-11, we read, 

When David knew that Saul was devising evil against 
him, he said to Abiathar the priest, Bring here the ephod. 
And David said, 0 Yahweh, the God of Israel, thy ser¬ 
vant hath surely heard that Saul is seeking to come to 
Keilak to destroy the people because of me. Will Saul 
come down as thy servant hath heard? 0 Yahweh, God 
of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And Yahweh 
said, He will come down. 

Nobody knows exactly what an ephod was, since 


ISRAEL A KINGDOM 


63 


the word “ephod” seems sometimes to mean an 
image, sometimes an ark, and sometimes a cere¬ 
monial garment. Once David “was girded with a 
linen ephod.” (II Sam. 6:14) Perhaps in this 
case it was a linen girdle in which were carried some 
stones for casting lots. It was some method of tak¬ 
ing a chance and thinking that Yahweh would guide 
the chance. 

Later, people learned to pray to Yahweh without 
an ephod, but the great thing was that David helped 
people to feel that it was important not to forget 
their God. 

Finally David, in his very last days when sorrow 
had come to him from many sources, provided a 
religious center for Israel. 

In Jerusalem there was a holy rock long held 
sacred by the Jebusites. During all the thirty 
years that David ruled as king in Jerusalem he had 
not robbed the Jebusites of their sacred rock. The 
regard for his conquered enemy’s religion certainly 
shows a fine side to his character. But he hoped 
before his death to make friendly plans with 
Araunah, the Jebusite, who owned the rock, 
in order that Israel might worship Yahweh there. 

The threshing floor of a people in those days was 
often the place where they worshiped their god 
with sacrificial feasts. The holy rock in Jerusalem 
seems to have been the threshing floor of the Jebu¬ 
sites under the care of Araunah. This rock can be 
seen today in Jerusalem carefully guarded. Under 
the highest point is a cave and at the entrance of 








64 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


the cave there is a spot worn smooth by kissing. 
Probably the Jebusites wore this spot smooth. 

It was the coming of a pestilence which gave David 
a chance to procure the rock. A prophet suggested 
to him that if he would build an altar to Yahweh 
on the holy place, perhaps the pestilence would 
cease. So David went to seek Araunah. 

And when Araunah looked down and saw the king and 
his servants crossing over to him, Araunah went out and 
bowed to the king with his face to the ground. And 
Araunah said, Why has my lord the king come to his 
servant? and David said, To buy the threshing floor 
from you to build an altar to Yahweh. . . . And Araunah 
said to the king, Yahweh your God accept you! And the 
king answered Araunah, No, but I will surely buy it from 
you at a price. I must not offer burnt offerings to 
Yahweh my God that cost me nothing. So David bought 
the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 
(77 Sam. 24:20-24) 

Thus David secured the spot that became a sacred 
center for all Israel, and through Israel to the whole 
world. We have now seen Israel acquire plenty 
of land, a capital city, a strong king, and a central 
shrine. Is it yet a great nation? 



BV PERMISSION FROM UNDERWOOD <& UNDERWOOD, NEW YORK 

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON 













CHAPTER VI 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 

Now Solomon sat upon the throne of David his father. 
And the King went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that 
was the great high place; a thousand burnt offerings did 
Solomon offer upon the altar. (Z Kings 2:12; 3:4) 

Jerusalem had not yet become the center of the 
Hebrew nation because it had no temple. This 
was the work which lay before the new king, to make 
Jerusalem the site of the chief temple and so the 
religious capital of the empire which David had 
budded. As soon therefore as he had put to death 
various enemies and had collected wood and stone, 
he began building on the mountain which David had 
bought from Araunah, the Jebusite. 

Hiram, King of Tyre, that beautiful Phoenician 
city jutting out into the sea, was one of the people 
that had “loved David.” He was glad to make 
plans with Solomon to send down cedar timber 
from the splendid trees growing up in the Lebanon 
mountains. Solomon offered to send up some of 
his own servants for the trees but added, “You 
know that there is no one among us who knows how 
to cut timber as the Sidonians.” (Z Kings 5:6) 
Would you not like to see one of those men from 
the city of Sidon, who was such a skilful tree chop- 

65 


66 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


per? Would he be very large and strong, one won¬ 
ders, or simply “skilful’’ in knowing how to chop 
the tree so that it would crash down in just the 
place it was wanted? 

That it was a great achievement to get these 
great trees out of the Lebanon is shown by the boast 
of an old Assyrian King written on a tablet: ‘ 1 That 

which no former King had accomplished I did.—I 
cut a road for cedars, massive, tall, strong cedars, 
of wonderful beauty, whose dark appearance was 
impressive, the mighty products of the Lebanon. ’’ 1 

How do you suppose King Hiram got these trees 
down to Jerusalem? He said to Solomon, “I will 
make them into rafts to go by sea to the place that 
you shall appoint, and will have them broken up 
there and you shall receive them.” (I Kings 5 : 9) 
So the great rafts came sailing down the coast till 
they, perhaps, came near to Joppa where Solomon’s 
men took them and cut them up into pieces needed 
for the buildings. In return Solomon gave to 
Hiram “four hundred thousand bushels of wheat 
for food for his household, and one hundred and 
sixty thousand gallons of oil from the beaten olives. 
This much Solomon gave to Hiram year by vear.” 
{IK ings 5:11) This is the way it came about that 
Solomon was able to build his palace and the temple 
out of beautiful fragrant cedars from the Lebanon. 

Of course it took several years to do all this work 
and while the building was going on Solomon did 

1 These are the words of Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon. See 
Rogers’ Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament , p. 366. 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 


67 


other things to increase the glory of Israel. He 
went down to Egypt where he was received with 
great magnificence and won the daughter of Pharaoh 
for his wife. Imagine the picture for yourselves 
of the powerful dignified Pharaoh of the Egyptians 
sitting on his throne with his attendants waving 
fans behind him. Before him appears Solomon in 
all his glory. His fine clothing would make the on¬ 
lookers forget that he came from the new and small 
kingdom of Israel. Bowing low before the throne 
he was graciously invited up to speak with the king 
and possibly to meet his daughter. Solomon must 
have seemed to Pharaoh to be a pleasing young 
monarch, for he offered bo give him his daughter 
in marriage and a city for a wedding present. 

After much feasting, Solomon brought his bride 
home to Jerusalem and great was the rejoicing and 
splendor. Now, thought many of the people, we 
are at last a great nation; are we not almost as fine 
as Egypt? 

Let us, now, make believe that we have been in¬ 
vited to Solomon’s magnificent wedding feast, to 
be held in the “House of the Forest of Lebanon.” 
Everything fine from various countries, dishes of 
silver and gold and ivory, beautiful clothing, deli¬ 
cious foods and spices, and even apes and peacocks' 
to add to the gayety are around us, with the Egyp¬ 
tian queen as the center of everybody’s aftertion. 
Wine and figs and olives and sour milk and other 
delicacies are freely passed to everybody. Then 
comes the moment of great interest in every feast, 


68 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


the time for the story to be told. (Read 1 Kings 
10 : 21 - 23 .) 

In the spacious hall fragrant with carved cedar 
wood arises the story teller. All eyes are fixed upon 
him as he begins: 

In the day that Yahweh made earth and heaven, no 
plant of the field was yet on the earth, and no herb of 
the field had yet sprung up, for Yahweh had not caused it 
to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the 
ground; but a mist used to rise from the earth and water 
the whole face of the ground. (Genesis 2:4-6) 

Ah, he is telling the story of the very beginning 
of things. Long, long ago at the beginning of the 
world there was no life, because there was no rain. 
With rain came everything; but what about man, did 
he grow too? 

Then Yahweh (continued the story teller) formed man 
of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life. Thus man became a living being. (Gen. 
2: 7) 

Oh, it took more than rain to make man; Yahweh 
himself shaped him out of the ground and blew his 
breath into the image. How wonderful it must 
have been to see the image come alive! Man, then, 
is made of two things, so the people thought, as they 
listened in wonder, earth and the breath of Yahweh. 
But where did this new made man live? shouts some 
one, (for people asked questions of story tellers in 
those days) and the story teller replies, 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 


69 


And Yahweh planted a garden in Eden, far in the 
East, and placed there the man whom he had formed. 
And out of the ground Yahweh made to grow every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. (Gen. 
2: 9) 

“He meant everything to be good, then,” shouts 
a hearer. But who brought evil into the world?” 

Ah, the evil came through a woman, a tree, and a 
serpent. It was the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil, a serpent that could talk, and the woman. 
Woman? How did Yahweh make woman? 

“Yahweh said,” continued the story teller, “It is 
not good for the man to be alone; I will make a 
helper suited to him.” 

Therefore out of the ground Yahweh formed all the 
beasts of the field and all the birds of the heavens, and 
brought them to the man to see what he would call them; 
and whatever the man called each living creature that 
was its name. Thus the man gave names to all cattle 
and all the beasts of the field; but for the man himself 
there was found no helper suited to him. 

Then Yahweh caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, 
so that he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed 
up its place with flesh. But the rib, which he had taken 
from the man, Yahweh fashioned into a woman and 
brought her to the man. Then said the man, 

This, now, is bone of my bone 
And flesh of my flesh. 

This one shall be called woman, 

For from man she was taken. 

(Gen. 2: 18-23) 


70 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


But how did the woman bring evil? The serpent 
came and told her that if they ate of the tree of 
knowledge they would “be as gods, knowing good 
and evil.” How could she help wishing that they 
might be as gods? So “she took the fruit and 
gave also to her husband with her and he ate.” 
Then they looked around in their garden and took 
some fig-leaves and sewed them together for clothes. 

When, that evening, they 

heard the sound of the footsteps of Yahweh Elohim, as 
he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, the 
man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of 
Yahweh Elohim among the trees of the garden. 

And Yahweh Elohim called to the man and said to him, 
Where art thou? And he said, I heard the sound of thy 
footsteps in the garden and I was afraid,—so I hid my¬ 
self. Then he said,—Hast thou eaten of the tree from 
which I commanded thee not to eat? And the man said, 
The woman whom thou didst place beside me, she gave me 
from the tree and I ate. When Yahweh Elohim said to 
the woman, What is this thou hast done? the woman 
replied, The serpent beguiled me and I ate. Then said 
Yahweh to the man, 

Cursed be the ground because of thee, 

By painful toil shalt thou eat from it all the days of thy 
life. 

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth for thee, 

And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. 

By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, 

Until thou return to the ground, 

Because from it thou wast taken; 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 


71 


For dust thou art, 

And to dust shalt thou return. 1 

{Gen. 3: 8-13, 17-19) 

So that is why they have to work so hard, is it? 
Perhaps this is what some of the slaves thought as 
they listened. Solomon has indeed given us plenty 
of “painful toil , n some of the men may have said 
who had brought the tine things to Jerusalem for 
the king. But most people were so proud of 
Solomon with all his tine clothes that they felt sorry 
for the first man and woman who had only fig-leaves 
and no house. 

One of the many houses Solomon planned was 
a magnificent palace for his Egyptian wife. But 
the -more palaces Solomon built, the more people 
there were who kept thinking, Why should we he 
slaves for Solomon? For the truth is that Solomon 
made people work for him in much the same way 
that Pharaoh of Egypt long ago had forced them 
to make bricks. 

King Solomon raised a forced levy out of all Israel; and 
the levy consisted of thirty thousand men. And he sent 
them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month in relays; a month 
they were in Lebanon, and two months at home; and 
Adoniram was in charge of the forced levy. And Solomon 
had seventy thousand burden-bearers and eighty thousand 
hewers of stone in the mountains. (7 Kings 5 : 13-15) 

Beside all these people working for him up in the 

i From Kent’s Beginnings of Hebrew History, p. 56. 


72 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


mountains, Solomon had a fleet of ships in Ezion- 
Geber down on the Red Sea. These ships were 
manned by slave-seamen who went out hunting 
gold and precious stones and red sandal wood to 
bring back to Solomon. In fact all Israel was work¬ 
ing for Solomon either as laborers or as super¬ 
intendents. (Read I Kings 9: 23, 26-28; 10:11, 12.) 

There was a young man named Jeroboam who had 
such great ability that Solomon “ placed him over 
all the forced levy of the house of Joseph. ’’ He was 
overseer of a band of workers in Jerusalem which 
enlarged foundations for the buildings to be placed 
on Mount Zion. When he saw how the people were 
driven as slaves he left and went back to his own 
little town of Zeredah. Probably many of his 
friends knew that he had thrown up the splendid 
opportunity which Solomon had given him because 
he could not bear to see his people made slaves. He 
might have been a rich man if he had been willing 
to be a slave-driver. 

After he had gone back to Zeredah he was not 
forgotten, for one day a man from Jerusalem came 
hunting for him. This was Ahijah, a prophet, who 
may have been sent by some of the Jerusalem slaves. 
He found Jeroboam going along the road and he 
took him aside into a field. 

Now Ahijah had clad himself with a new garment; and 
they two were alone in the field. Then Ahijah took hold 
of the new garment, that was on him, and rent it in 
twelve pieces. And he said to Jeroboam, Take for yourself 
ten pieces; for thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel, Be- 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 


73 


hold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon 
and will give ten tribes to thee, but he shall have one 
tribe. (7 Kings 11:26-32) 

Ah, this meant revolution! What should 
Jeroboam do? Go to Jerusalem and call on the 
slaves to revolt against Solomon? Probably 
Jeroboam went back to Jerusalem with Ahijah and 
tried to get the people to rise up and refuse to be 
slaves because it is stated that “ Solomon sought to 
kill Jeroboam.” But Jeroboam’s attempt was not 
successful because Solomon’s power was too great, 
and because many people enjoyed his 1 ‘glory.” 

“Then Jeroboam arose and fled to Egypt, to Shishak, 
King of Egypt, and was in Egypt till the death of 
Solomon.” (7 Kings 11:40) 

Solomon, in spite of some trouble, was able to 
continue his plans. To make his kingdom more safe 
he fortified various towns. One of them was the 
city of Gezer which Pharaoh had given as a wedding 
gift to his daughter. This city of Gezer has been 
dug out and some stone towers have been found 
which Solomon built. Two methods Solomon took 
to save his kingdom from attack, fortifications and 
friendships. He found that if he made friends 
with people they would not try to overthrow him. 
In those days people cared especially about their 
kinsmen and would not often go to war against them. 
Solomon had made the Pharaoh of Egypt his kins¬ 
man by marrying his daughter. This seemed a 
good plan for making many other people his kinsmen 


74 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


and friends. So Solomon went to all the little kings 
round and asked for their daughters in marriage. 
Probably the daughters thought it a fine thing to 
marry a king with so much ‘‘ glory.’’ Stories say 
that Solomon had seven hundred wives! No wonder 
that he had to build homes to keep his wives and be 
prepared to entertain their relatives. 

But though this plan of making marriages with 
all his neighbors brought him peace, it brought 
trouble, too, for all these wives wanted to worship 
their own gods and they had to have temples hnd 
high places for this purpose. Also they expected 
Solomon to worship all their gods and he hardly 
had any time left to worship Yahweh. For this, 
however, he made up by building for Yahweh a 
magnificent temple, not unlike the great temples 
of Egypt, some of which are still standing today. 
We have no picture of Solomon’s temple but the 
descriptions in our Bible tell us what some of the 
temple priests remembered about it. Underneath 
the temple mount today is a quarry of the beautiful 
white stone that was probably used. The temple 
was built of stone and cedar. It was not meant as a 
building in which the people should meet but as a 
dwelling place for Yahweh, and therefore was not 
large. People came together in the court outside. 

The temple was situated just west of the holy rock 
which David had bought from Araunah, the 
Jebusite. The rock was used as the altar for burnt 
offerings. 

At the entrance to the porch were two beautiful 


75 


THE GLORY OF SOLOMON 

brass pillars. In the Holy Place was a table of 
bread and ten golden candlesticks. Around the top 
of the room was ornamented lattice work letting in 
a little light. But the Holy of Holies was entirely 
dark. It contained a sacred ark which had winged 
figures on the top called cherubim. Here Yahweh 
was thought to dwell. When Solomon dedicated the 
temple he said, 

Yahweh has set the sun in the heavens 
But himself has willed to dwell in darkness. 

I have therefore built thee a house to dwell in, 

A home for thee for eternity. 

(Z Kings 8: 12, 13) 1 

Solomon, then, brought both good and bad to the 
Hebrews. The temple became of great importance 
as a center, but the slave labor with which it was 
built made many people turn away from it, and 
brought the weakening of the kingdom by revolution 
and division. 

1 See H. P. Smith’s Old Test. Hist., p. 169. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 

The successor to Solomon and all his glory was 
Rehoboam, his son. He had grow up in luxury 
and would naturally expect to make Israel more 
glorious than ever. The enemies that had risen 
against Solomon, he did not think important. 
Surely they and all the people would be so proud 
of the glory of Israel that they would gladly work 
for the new king. 

As soon as the funeral and the days of mourning 
for Solomon were past, we may be sure that his 
palaces were again filled with joyous feasting multi¬ 
tudes. Some people were glad because the feasts 
gave them a chance for new pleasures, and some 
were sad because it meant that they must keep on 
working like slaves. 

Let us imagine that we are in the halls of cedar 
again, attending a magnificent banquet given by 
Rehoboam in honor of his coronation. Rich foods 
from Egypt he has given his guests and wine in 
abundance. Many are half drunk but some are 
watching and thinking what they will do to save 
themselves from being slaves any longer to such a 
useless king. 


76 





THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 


77 


“ Where is the story teller V’ some one shouts, 
“Now that we can eat and drink no more let the 
story teller entertain us.” Forth he is dragged into 
the center; but he sees that most of them are too far 
gone in drink to hear much, so he begins the old 
story of the flood which came to punish men for their 
wickedness. First he perhaps reminded them that 
the hero of his story was Noah who once was so 
drunk in his tent that all his sons were ashamed of 
him. When he “woke from his wine,” (Gen. 9:24) 
he also was ashamed. Noah was the one who 
according to the story saved men and animals from 
all being destroyed in the flood. Then the story 
teller told 


THE STORY OF THE FLOOD 1 

When Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great 
in the earth, and that every purpose in the thoughts of 
his heart was only evil continually, Yahweh regretted that 
he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his 
heart. Therefore Yahweh said, I will destroy from the 
face of the ground man whom I have created, for I re¬ 
gret that I have made them. 

But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. And 
Yahweh said to Noah, Make an ark of cypress wood. And 
Noah did according to all that Yahweh commanded him. 

Then Yahweh said to Noah, Enter thou and all thy 

i This is the oldest story of the Flood, taken from the “Judean 
Story-Book.” Parts of it are found in Gen. 6: 5-8: 22. This is 
the putting together of that old story by 0. F. Kent in his Begin¬ 
nings of Hebrew Hist., pp. 63-67. 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


78 

house into the ark; for thee have I found righteous before 
me in this generation. Of all clean beasts thou shall take 
to them by sevens, male and his mate, but of the beasts that 
are not clean by twos, a male and his mate; and of the 
clean birds of the heavens, seven by seven, to keep off¬ 
spring alive upon the face of the earth. For after seven 
days I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and 
forty nights; and every living thing that I have made 
will I destroy from off the face of the ground. And 
Noah did according to all that Yahweh commanded him. 

And it came to pass after the seven days that the waters 
of the flood came upon the earth. Then Noah, together 
with his sons and his wife, and his sons’ wives, entered 
into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean 
beasts, and beasts that are not clean, and of birds, and of 
everything that creeps upon the ground there went in 
two by two to Noah into the ark. And Yahweh shut him 
in. 

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty 
nights, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, 
and it was lifted high above the earth. All in whose nos¬ 
trils was the breath of life, of all that was on the land, died. 
Thus Yahweh destroyed everything that existed upon 
the face of the ground, both man and animals, and 
creeping things, and birds of the heavens, so that they 
were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only was left 
and they that were with him in the ark. 

But it came to pass at the end of forty days that the 
rain from heaven ceased, and the waters retired continually 
from off the land. 

Then Noah opened the window of the ark which he had 
made; and he sent forth a raven, and it kept going to and 
fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 


79 


And he sent forth from him a dove to see if the waters 
had subsided from off the face of the ground; but the 
dove found no rest for the sole of its foot, and it returned 
to him in the ark, for the waters were on the face of the 
whole earth, and he stretched forth his hand and took 
her and brought her to him into the ark. 

Then he waited seven days more and again sent forth the 
dove from the ark. And the dove came in to him at even¬ 
tide; and, lo, there was in her mouth a freshly plucked 
olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided 
from off the earth. And he waited seven days more and 
sent forth the dove; but it did not return to him again. 

Then Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, 
and behold, the face of the ground was dry. And Noah 
built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean beast 
and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the 
altar. 

And when Yahweh smelled the pleasant odor, Yahweh 
said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground be¬ 
cause of man, for the purpose of man’s heart is evil from 
his youth; nor will I again smite everything that lives, 
as I have done. 


While the earth remains, 

Seedtime and harvest, 

Cold and heat, 

Summer and winter, 

Day and night, 

Shall not cease. 

By the time the story teller had finished, many 
had gone to sleep, overcome by their gluttony and 
wine. Now is the time, thought the slaves and the 


80 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

people whom Jeroboam had talked to about revolt, 
to let the king feel our power. So they went to him 
and said, 

“Your father made our yoke intolerable. Now, there¬ 
fore, make the intolerable service of your father and the 
heavy yoke he laid upon us lighter, and we will serve you. 

(Z Kings 12:4) 

No doubt their mutterings and threatening hands 
showed that they would not serve him if he did not 
change matters. The king was overwhelmed. He 
did not dare refuse and he certainly was not ready 
to grant their request. Finally he answered, 

4 ‘ Go away for three days, then come again to me. ’ ’ 
During those three days Rehoboam took counsel 
with the old men who had been the early counsellors 
of Solomon. He asked also the young men. They 
had seen Solomon succeed, they had been given 
high places by him, they had lost all sympathy with 
the people who did the work. The old men said, 
“Give them a favorable answer, then they will be 
your servants forever / 9 But the young men 
thought it would be better to answer harshly so that 
the power of the king would frighten the people. 
(Read 1 Kings 12: 6-11) 

So when all the people came to Rehoboam the third 
day, as the king bade, saying, “ Come to me the third 
day,” the king answered the people harshly. He 
said to them, 

My father made your yoke heavy, but I also will make 
your yoke still heavier; my father chastised you with 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 81 

whips, but I will chastise you with scourges. (7 Kings 
12:14.) 

But Rehoboam did not know the people. They 
had made up their minds not to be frightened into 
being slaves any longer. So when they “saw that 
the king gave no heed to the people/ * they shouted 
out their words of revolution: 

What share have we in David? 

We have no claim in the son of Jesse! 

To your tents, 0 Israel! 

Now care for your house, 0 David! 

(7 Kings 12: 16) 

Rehoboam hoped that he could still force the 
people to work for him. So he sent to them Adoni- 
ram, the man whom they all knew as the chief slave- 
driver. When they saw him they were filled with 
indignation and stoned him to death on the spot. 
Then the king, to get away from the tumult, “quickly 
mounted his chariot” and fled for his life. 

Thus was the kingdom which David and Solomon 
had moulded into unity broken apart by injustice. 
Henceforth we have two kingdoms, Judah, with Jeru¬ 
salem as its capital, and Israel, as the new kingdom 
to the north called itself. The young Jeroboam 
was proclaimed king in the north and he made the 
city of Shechem his capital. Rehoboam was still 
ruler of Judah but he had by his injustice to the 
workers separated the great mass of the Hebrew 
people from their Judean kinsmen. 


82 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Jeroboam was so determined that the people 
should not be tempted to go back to Jerusalem to 
worship at the temple that he made two places for 
people to worship in the north, at Bethel and at Dan. 
Here he set up two golden calves and he said to the 
people, 

Behold your gods, 0 Israel, which brought you up from 
the land of Egypt! (I Kings 12: 28) 

People did not seem to think this strange, so they 
went to Bethel and Dan and paid little attention to 
Solomon’s fine temple in Jerusalem. 

The temple was neglected, too, by the people in 
Jerusalem because they worshiped at high places 
all around the city where there were older pillars 
and trees. Rehoboam did nothing to make the city 
better or more beautiful. He just had a good time 
with the fine things that his father had left him and 
proved himself a weakling. In his fifth year the 
temple had its treasures stolen by Shishak, Pharaoh 
of Egypt. On the walls of a gateway in Egypt are 
the names of towns in Israel that Shishak also con¬ 
quered. When kinsmen fight each other it is an 
invitation to outsiders to come and rob them both. 

In Solomon and Rehoboam, then, we see two kings 
who might have done much to make the Hebrews a 
great nation, but they failed because of their self¬ 
ishness and love of fine things. These desert peo¬ 
ple had now become wealthy, but riches are not 
greatness so long as rulers are selfish and their peo¬ 
ple slaves. The people of Israel made a bold stroke 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 


83 


for freedom. As we follow the story of this new 
northern Kingdom, let ns see whether they become a 
freer and a greater people than Judah. 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 
A Drama 

Characters : 

King Rehoboam Eliashib 

Jeroboam Zeruah, Mother of 

Abijah, the Prophet Jeroboam 

Adoniram, the King’s Abigail 

Servant Azra, Son of Abigail 

Scene: A rough country road near the village of Zeredah. 
Rocks and small trees by the roadside. 

Scene I 

Jeroboam: ( entering slowly) How dare he make us slaves? 
(Walks on thoughtfully.) 

Eliashib: ( entering from opposite direction) Salaam, Jero¬ 
boam, why art thou here? Is it not true that Solomon has placed 
thee over all the forced levy of the house of Joseph? 

Jeroboam : Yes, so he hath. But w r hy should I force my brothers 
to work for the glorious apparel of King Solomon? 

Eliashib: Great things have I heard of thee in Jerusalem. 
Solomon hath declared to all that thou dost show great ability 
and industry in his building. 

Jeroboam: Truly he hath much praise for those who do his 
work without murmuring. 

Zeruah: ( entering hurriedly) Ah, here thou art; I cannot bear 
to lose thee for an hour. ( Bowing to Eliashib) Is it not well to 
have him again in Zeredah? 

Eliashib: That it is, yet hath he turned his back on great joy. 


84 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


I saw thy son at the great feast in the house of the forest of 
Lebanon. He was seated not far from the king. Why should 
he throw away that splendor for naught? 

Jeroboam: For naught sayest thou? For freedom; for Israels 
birthright. Why did Moses lead us out of Egypt? Because we 
would not be slaves. Because Israel was born in the free air 
of the desert. Shall we now let one of our own rulers make 
us mere bricklayers as Pharaoh did? Will Yahweh be our god 
if we are slaves? 

Zeruah : Yahweh delighteth in the strong. Surely thou shalt 
find favor in his sight. 

Eliashib: (to Jeroboam) Peradventure thou speakest truly, 
but today men fear to speak. They have no bread if they 
speak the thoughts of their hearts. 

Abigail: {entering with haste and falling at the feet of Jero¬ 
boam) Oh, help me! canst thou not free my son? Adoniram is 
dragging him off to build for the king; here he comes; 0 speak 
to him! 

(Adoniram enters with young fellow hound . Abigail falls 
on knees. Jeroboam steps out into the road.) 

Jeroboam : 0 Adoniram, chief of the forced labor, leave, I pray 

you, this boy with his mother, since she is a widow and needeth 
his help. 

Adoniram: Can the king’s business stop for poor widows? 
Thou, 0 Jeroboam, hast refused the favors of the king. His 
officers are seeking thee. Draw not others to destruction with 
thee. (Drags hoy out.) 

Abigail: 0 Yahweh, wilt thou not deliver thy children? 
Jeroboam: Yea, deliver us from the glory of Solomon and the 
hard-heartedness of his servants. (He starts after Adoniram.) 
Zeruah: (stopping him) Nay, thou shalt not now expose thy¬ 
self to death. (To Abigail) Come, my house shall be thy house 
until thy son return. 

Eliashib: (assisting Abigail) Let me help thee. 

Zeruah: (helping to support Abigail, turns as she is leaving) 
Wait my son, wait, till Yahweh shall open the door as he did 
when Moses led the people forth. 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 85 

Jeroboam: ( sits thoughtfully on a rock ) 0 Yaliweh, wilt thou 

free thy people 1 ? 

Abijah : ( entering with an air of mystery ) Jeroboam, son of 
Nebat, I would speak to thee alone. ( Draws him to side of road.) 
Jeroboam: Bringest thou a message from Yahweh? 

Abijah: ( taking off new cloak rends it) Take for thyself ten 
pieces; for thus saith \ ahweh, the god of Israel, behold I will 
rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten 
tribes to thee. 

Jeroboam: Shall the kingdom then be divided? The kingdom 
of David? 

Abijah: \ea, Solomon hath broken the kingdom. Now are 
we united and slave or divided and free. 

Jeroboam: ( falling on his knees) Oh, I pray thee, when is the 
day ? To Jerusalem may I now go and rouse the people to throw 
off the yoke of slavery? 

Abijah: Nay, Solomon seeks thy life; flee to Pharaoh and wait 
till the death of Solomon, then come and be a Moses to the 
people! ( Exit Abijah.) 

Jeroboam: To Egypt! there where slavery thrives? There will 
Yahweh teach me to be a Moses to the people. 

Zeruah: (enters in time to hear Jeroboam's last words) 
Thou, a Moses to the people? So have I always thought, for 
thy father, ?\ebat, dedicated thee to Yahweh's service. Goest 
thou now to Jerusalem to arouse the people? I will go with 
thee. I will strengthen thy hand. 

Jeroboam : Alas, I must wait. Abijah, the prophet, hath sought 
me out. See these ten pieces of his garment as token that I 
shall be king over ten tribes. 

Zeruah : 0 strike now; thou canst win, the people are with 

thee. 

Jeroboam: ^<ay, Solomon's task-masters are too strong; they 
hold the people's lives in their hands. The prophet is right, I 
must flee to Egypt. 

Zeruah: Must the widowed mother be bereft once more? 
Jeroboam: Thou art strong; thou art both father and mother 
to me; thou must wait. Didst thou hear the words of Adoniram 


86 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


that the king’s officers are seeking me? Soon they may be here. 
Farewell, Yahweh protect thee. (Exit Jeroboam.) 

Zeruah : 0 Yahweh, guide him, make him a Moses to the 

people. 


Scene II 

Rehoboam : {on th/one.) On one side old men counsellors, op¬ 
posite, young men counsellors. {Turning to old men.) 0 ye 
counsellors of my father, hear me. The insolent people have 
said to me, “Make the yoke that your father put upon us lighter!” 
What answer do you advise me to give this people? 

Old Man Counsellor: If now you will be a servant to this 
people, and will serve them, and give them a favorable answer, 
then will they be your servants forever. 

Rehoboam : Why favor them ? My father Solomon commanded 
them. 

Young Counsellor: Yea, why favor them? 

Old Man: Thy father made friends with them first, and they 
were proud of him; therefore were they slaves. 

Second Old Man : First win their hearts, then will they work 
for thee. 

Rehoboam: Have I not given them splendid feasts? What 
more can I do? Shall the king humble himself to talk with his 
slaves? {Turning to young men) What answer do you advise 
us to give to this people who have spoken to me, saying, “Make 
the yoke that your father put upon us lighter.” 

Young Counsellor: Thus must you answer this people. “My 
little finger is thicker than my father’s loins! And now whereas 
my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, I will make your yoke 
heavier; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise 
you with scourges.” 

Second Young Counsellor : That will fill them with terror and 
they will go back to their work without a murmur. 

Third Young Counsellor: Be harsh with them that they may 
know that there will be no hope, then will they go away quietly. 
Rehoboam: Your words are wisest; we have grown up together 


THE KINGDOM DIVIDED 87 

and know the new times. Ye old men counsel well for other days. 
(Noise outside. Enter crowd.) 

Arza, Son of Abigail : Thy three days are passed; what answer 
dost thou give the people? 

Rehoboam : (harshly) My little finger is thicker than my father’s 
loins. My father loaded you with a heavy yoke, but I will make 
your yoke heavier; my father chastised you with whips, but I 
will chastise you with scourges. 

Crowd: Scourges, whips? 

Arza: Thou knowest, 0 king, that we will no longer be thy 
subjects. Jeroboam shall be our Moses and our king. 

Crowd: Jeroboam our Moses! 

Jeroboam: (coming forward) Thou hast degraded the house of 
Da\id and therefore divided it. Now care for your own house, 
0 David! To your tents, 0 Israel! 

^oung Man Counsellor: What insolent words are these? Re¬ 
turn to your labor, ye dogs. 

Abigail: No more shall our sons build your palaces. (Reho¬ 
boam lifts his hand to command , but stops as he sees Abijah 
coming forward.) 

Abijah : By thee is the house of David broken in twain. 
(Holding up two strips of his garment) Here are two tribes 
foi thee; ten has Yahweh given to Jeroboam. Go not out to 
fight against thy kinsman, for all this is according to the word 
of Yahweh. 

Crowd: Jeroboam, the new Moses, the king of Israel! Free¬ 
dom and life! 

Old Man Counsellor: (to the king) Flee for thy life. 
Young Man Counsellor: Send Adoniram. (Exit king.) 
Jeroboam. Wliat share have we in David? "We have no claim 
in the son of Jesse! 

Adoniram: (entering furiously with scourge in hand) Wliat 
mean ye, insolent slaves? Tomorrow the king receiveth ambas¬ 
sadors from Egypt. Food must we have and wine. Go. (Strikes 
one of them) Bring your portions to the king. 

Crowd: Slaves? We have a new king. Go thyself. (Crowd 
forces him out.) 


88 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

Jeroboam : To your teuts, 0 Israel. Say farewell to Jerusalem. 
Henceforth will we worship Yahweh in the sanctuaries of Israel; 
there shall ye yourselves be priests unto the God who brought 
you up out of the land of Egypt. Come quickly, let us journey 

to Shechem. (Leads the people forth.) 


CHAPTER VIII 


ELIJAH THE PROPHET AND AHAB 

THE KING 

Jeroboam had founded the kingdom of Israel with 
all the people free from slavery, but when he died 
there seemed to be no man big enough to take his 
place. Revolution followed revolution until finally 
Omri, a general of the army, was proclaimed king. 
Thus was founded the house of Omri. Omri also 
built a city to be the capital for his house. He saw 
a hill rising up like a fort in a plain and thought 
what a splendid capital it would make; so he bought 
it and built on it and named it Samaria, after the 
the man who sold it to him. The foundations of 
this palace of Omri in Samaria have been dug out by 
some of our American explorers. They found the 
stones fitted to the rock at the top of the hill. 

From the Hebrew writings we know no more about 
Omri, but an engraved stone has been found in the 
wilderness of Moab which tells us more. A clergy¬ 
man who was traveling in Moab saw the top of a 
tablet sticking up among the rocks. It was just like 
finding a piece of our Bible out there in the wilder¬ 
ness for, when scholars afterward read it, they 
found it was written in the same style as the Bible 

89 


90 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

and that it told about the Israelite King Omri. It 
was called the Moabite Stone because it was set up 
by the king of Moab at the city of Dibon. Here are 
parts of the inscription: 

“I am Mesha, son of Chemoshmelek, king of Moab, 
the Dibonite. My father ruled over Moab thirty 
years, and I ruled after my father. And I made 
this high place to Chemosh in Quarhah because of 
the deliverance of Mesha, because he saved me from 
all the kings and because he caused me to see (my 
desire) upon all who hated me. Omri, king of Israel 
—he oppressed Moab many days, because Chemosh 
was angry with his land.” 

This shows us that Omri went over and conquered 
the Moabites and that they said that this trouble 
came upon them because Chemosh, their god, was 
angry with them. They built high places for their 
god just as Jeroboam did for Yahweh at Bethel and 
Dan. The rest of the stone tablet tells us also 
about a defeat of the son of Omri, whom we know as 
Ahab. 

“Now Omri had possessed all the land of Medeba 
and dwelt in it all his days and half the days of his 
son.— The King of Israel had built for himself 
Ataroth. And I fought against the city and took it, 
and I slew all the people of the city, a sight (pleas¬ 
ing) to Chemosh and to Moab.— And Chemosh 
said to me: “Go take Nebo against Israel”; and 
I went by night and fought against it from break 
of dawn till noon, and I took it and slew all, seven 
thousand men, boys, women, and girls, for I had 


ELIJAH AND AHAB 


91 


devoted it to Ashtar—Chemosh. And I took from 
there the altar-hearth of Yahweh.” 

Y e have been sorry to see how crnel the Hebrews 
were from the days when Lantech sang his “Song of 
the Sword” np to the time when Solomon made 
slaves of his brothers. Perhaps we have been sur¬ 
prised to find that they always thought Yahweh 
would be pleased with their harshness. But this 
Moabite Stone lets us see that everybody practiced 
cruelty in those days. Each little nation had its own 
god who, they thought, was pleased with harsh 
treatment of their enemies. It is very hard indeed 
for any nation to have thoughts entirely different 
from its neighbor nations. 

You will not be greatly surprised, then, to find that 
we must next tell the story of the wicked and cruel 
King Ahab, the son of Omri. Jeroboam had set 
up the kingdom of Israel in the north because he 
wanted freedom for the people. But now there 
came a king who cared more about finery than free¬ 
dom. Ahab tried to make himself a kind of mag¬ 
nificent Solomon. He built himself an “ivory” 
palace on the hill of Samaria and wanted to get the 
people’s land away from them. 

Ahab was like Solomon also because he married 
foreign wives and a good deal of his wickedness 
came through them. The chief wife of Ahab was 
Jezebel, from the city of Sidon on the sea coast. 
She had always worshiped the Baal, 1 so Ahab built 
a Baal temple for her in Samaria just as Solomon 


1 Baal means “lords.” 


92 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


had built temples for the gods of his wives. But 
Jezebel was not satisfied with this; she wanted every¬ 
body to stop worshiping Yahweh and worship her 
god Baal. She even went so far as to kill some of 
the prophets of Yahweh. 

The great champion of Yahweh in the time of 
Aliab was Elijah, the prophet. He was a man of 
the desert; he wore an animal's skin for a garment 
and tied it on with a leather girdle (II Kings 
1:8). He kept away from Jezebel’s court and 
stirred up the people to be true to their own Yah¬ 
weh. When Jezebel heard of this, and heard that 
he had caused some of the prophets of Baal to be 
killed, she sent word to Elijah, saying, 

As surely as you are Elijah and I am Jezebel, may the 
gods do to me what they will, if I do not make your life 
as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. 
(7 Kings 19 : 2) 

Because of this threat and because almost every¬ 
body in Israel had become slaves of Jezebel, Elijah 
traveled off to the desert to seek Yahweh at his 
Holy Mountain. An old story says that as he jour¬ 
neyed south to the desert he was so discouraged that 
he cried, “It is enough; now, 0 Yahweh, take my 
life.” 

At last he came to the mountain and lodged in 
a cave and prayed to his God. The old story tells 
about the meeting between Elijah and Yahweh thus: 

V 

Yahweh passed by, and a great and violent wind rent 


ELIJAH AND AHAB 


93 


the mountain and broke in pieces the rocks before Yahweh; 
but Yahweh w r as not in the wind. And after the wind 
an earthquake; but Yahweh was not in the earthquake. 
And after the earthquake a fire; but Yahweh was not in 
the fire. And after the fire the sound of a still, small 
voice. 

And as soon as Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face 
in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of 
the cave. And then there came a voice to him and said, 
What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have been 
very jealous for Yahweh, the God of hosts, for the Israel¬ 
ites have forsaken thee, thrown down thine altars, and 
slain thy prophets with the sword, and I only am left, 
and they seek to take my life away. (7 Kings 19:11-14) 

Here in the mountains the heart of Elijah was 
so strengthened that he knew that he was not the 
only one faithful to their national God, and after 
a while he wanted to go back and stand against 
Jezebel and for Yahweh in Israel. 

When he got back to Israel again, Elijah found 
that Naboth, the owner of a vineyard, had been 
stoned to death to get his land for the king. This 
did not seem much like the freedom for which Israel 
revolted against Rehoboam. Here is the old story 
probably just as the old story tellers used to 
tell it. 


The Story of Naboth’s Vineyard 

Now Naboth the Jezreelite, had a vineyard beside the 
palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. And Ahab spoke to 


94 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Naboth, saying, Give me yonr vineyard that I may have 
it for a vegetable garden, because it is near to my house, 
and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it is 
more satisfactory to you, I will give you the value of it in 
money. But Naboth answered Ahab, Yahweh forbid me, 
that I should give to you the inheritance of my fathers. 
Ahab came into his house in ill humor and lay down on 
his bed and covered his face and would eat no food. 

Then Jezebel his wife said to him, Is it you who now 
holds sway in Israel? Arise, eat, and let your heart be 
cheerful. I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the 
Jezreelite. So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and 
sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders 
and to the nobles who were in his city who presided with 
Naboth. And she wrote in the letters, Proclaim a fast 
and also place Naboth in a prominent place among the 
people. Then place two base men before him and let 
them bear witness against him, saying, You have cursed 
God and the King. And then carry him out and stone 
him to death. 

And the men of his city, the elders and the nobles who 
presided in his city, did as Jezebel had ordered them; 
they carried him out of the city and stoned him to death 
with stones. 

And they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth has been stoned 
and is dead. And Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take pos¬ 
session of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he 
refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive 
but dead. And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was 
dead, Ahab rose up to go down to the vineyard of Naboth 
the Jezreelite, to take possession of it. 

But the word of Yahweh came to Elijah the Tishbite, 
saying, Arise, go down to meet Ahab the King of Israel, 
who dwells in Samaria; he is just now in the vineyard 


ELIJAH AND AHAB 


95 


of Naboth, whither he has gone down to take possession of 
it. And thon shalt speak to him, saying, Thus saith 
Yahweh, Hast thou killed and also taken possession? 
Moreover thou shalt speak to him, saying, Thus saith 
Yahweh, In the place where the dogs licked the blood of 
Naboth will the dogs lick thy blood also. And of Jezebel 
also Yahweh has spoken, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel 
in the district of Jezreel. (Read I Kings 21) 

Injustice is the upsetter of many king’s thrones; 
injustice furnishes fire for revolution. The throne 
of Ahab and Jezebel began to totter as soon as they 
began to be unjust to their people. Elijah the 
prophet was the man who dared speak against this • 
injustice and prepare the way for revolt. Elijah 
could only begin it but his successor, Elisha, carried 
out his work. Ahab lived and carried on war 
against Moab and against the king of Syria about 
the city of Ramoth in Gilead. There he died in 
battle. But the punishment for his sins came upon 
his sons, and Jezebel lived long enough to receive 
her own punishment, as the rest of the story 
tells. 

The revolutionist this time was a young man 
named Jehu. The prophets anointed him and his 
own men proclaimed him King. Then he set out 
to wipe out the house of Omri and Ahab. Listen 
to the story teller’s account of how he came to 
Jezreel and killed Jezebel: 

Now the watchman was standing on the tower of Jez¬ 
reel, when he saw the cloud of dust about Jehu, as he 


96 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


came, and said, I see a cloud of dust. And Joram (King 
of Israel, son of Ahab) said, Take a horseman and send him 
to meet them that he may inquire whether all is well? 
So one went on horseback to meet him and said, Thus 
saith th,e king, Is all well? And Jehu replied, What have 
you to do with welfare? Turn about and follow me. So 
the watchman reported, The messenger came to them but 
comes not back. Then he sent out a second horseman who 
came to them and said, Thus saith the king, Is all well? 
And Jehu answered, What have you to do with welfare? 
Turn about and follow me. So the watchman reported, 
He also came to them but comes not back; however, the 
driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for 
he is wont to drive furiously. 

Then Joram said, Make ready. And as soon as they 
had made ready his chariot, Joram, king of Israel, set 
out and went to meet Jehu and found him in the field of 
Naboth the Jezreelite. And when Joram saw Jehu, he 
said, Is all well, Jehu? And he answered, How can all 
be well, as long as the whoredoms of your mother Jezebel 
and her witchcrafts are so many? Then Joram turned 
about to flee crying, Treachery, 0 Ahaziah!—but Jehu, 
being already armed, shot with his bow and struck Joram 
between his shoulders so that the arrow went through his 
heart and he sank down in his chariot. 

Then Jehu said to Bidkar his captain, Take him up and 
cast him in the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for I re¬ 
member how that, when I and you rode together after 
Ahab his father, Yahweh pronounced this judgment upon 
him; Surely I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and his 
sons saith Yahweh; and I will requite thee in this plot 
saith Yahweh. Now therefore take and cast him into this 
plot, according to the word of Yahweh. 


ELIJAH AND AHATt 


97 


Then Jehu came to Jezreel. And as soon as Jezebel 
heard of it, she painted her eyes, attired her head, and 
looked out at the window. And as Jehu came in at the 
gate, she said, Is all well, for Zimri, your master’s 
murderer? But he looked up to the window and said, 
Who is on my side ? Who ? And two or three eunuchs 
looked at him. And he said, Throw her down. And they 
threw her down so that some of her blood was spattered 
on the wall and on the horses, and he trod her under foot. 
Then he went in and ate and drank. Thereupon he gave 
the command, See now to this cursed woman and bury 
her, for she is a king’s daughter. But when they went 
to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull, 
the feet, and the hands. When, therefore, they came back 
and told him, he said, This is the word of Yahweh which 
he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In 
the plot of Jezreel shall the dogs eat Jezebel’s flesh, and 
the body of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the 
field in the plot of Jezreel, so that they cannot say, This if 
Jezebel. 1 (II Kings 9: 17-37) 

This terrible story of the end of the house of 
Omri had one splendid effect upon Israel, it let 
everybody see how awful is wickedness and injus¬ 
tice. People had begun to think about this when 
Rehoboam tried to hold them as slaves, but now 
they felt still more strongly that it does not pay 
to treat anybody unfairly about his land or his work 
or anything else. 

Jehu, who headed the revolution, seems to have 

i Note what is said of his fast driving in II Kings 19:20. To 
this day we say of a fast driver, “He drives like Jehu.” 


98 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


been a dashing young fellow who put through every¬ 
thing he attempted and was a zealous worshiper of 
Yah well. He stamped out the worship of Baal 
which Jezebel had tried to put in place of Yahweh 
worship. 

One of the helpers of Jehu was a man named 
Jehonadab, son of Rechab. Jehu said to him, “Is 
your heart in sincere sympathy with my heart, as 
mine is with yours?” And Jehonadab answered, 
“It is.” Then Jehu said, “If it be, give me your 
hand.’ ’ 

After this friendly covenant they worked to¬ 
gether against Baal worship. Now Jehonadab was 
a man who did not believe in cities. He would not 
live in a house but dwelt in a tent. He looked back 
to the desert as the finest days in Israel’s history. 
He thought that before they built houses and planted 
vineyards they did not get drunk with wine and wor¬ 
ship Baal. Just as Elijah went back to the Holy 
Mountain better to hear Yahweh’s voice, so Jehona¬ 
dab thought that the people of Israel ought to live 
simply, as they did in the desert, if they wanted to 
please Yahweh. Israel could not forget the desert 
and how Yahweh spoke to them there. 

Would you like to see a picture of the dashing 
young soldier, Jehu? Unbelievable as it seems we 
have found one among the monuments of the people 
of the two rivers—the Assyrians. Their king, Shal- 
manezer, had engraved on a tablet a picture of 
Jehu, humbly kneeling down before him. Of course 


ELIJAH AND AHAB 


99 


it is not as clear a picture as a modem photographer 
would make but it gives us a general view that 
makes us feel much more acquainted with those 
days. The inscription around the picture tells us 
what presents Jehu brought to the king of Assyria. 

“ Tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: silver, gold, a 
bowl (?) of gold, a basin (?) of gold, cups of gold, 
bars of lead, scepters (?) for the hand of the king, 
and balsam wood I received from him. ” 

One can imagine that Jehu would not like to take 
this humble attitude to a king. Nor would he like 
being called the “Son of Omri” when he had de¬ 
stroyed the house of Omri. But the Assyrians did 
not know the difference, and Jehu had to learn to 
take a good many defeats in the later part of his life. 

The Assyrians play a great part in the story of 
this heroic nation from this time on through many 
years. They are always looking for smaller nations 
to conquer. Indeed, we have seen in this chapter 
the beginning of wickedness that will keep Israel 
from becoming a great nation. No nation can be 
great that treats its people as Aliab treated Naboth. 
The ideal of freedom for the people was almost de¬ 
stroyed by Ahab and only partially restored by 
Jehu. Can Israel recover her true freedom, or will 
the wicked elements weaken her so that she 
will easily fall into the hands of her Assyrian 
enemies? The rest of the story of Israel must 


answer. 


CHAPTER IX 


NEW FORCES IN ISRAEL 

Have you noticed that you have not yet heard 
about any books being written by the Hebrews? 
Stories and songs you have heard of which were 
taken from the “later writings of the Hebrews.’’ 
But now we have come to the place where people 
began to write these story books. Of course one 
reason they did not write books before was that 
they had such good story tellers and everybody 
learned the stories from hearing them told. By the 
time boys and girls were twelve years old they prob¬ 
ably knew word for word dozens of Israel’s songs 
and stories which they had heard at feasts and at 
home. 

We do not know whether the Jews wrote at first 
on a kind of rough paper made from papyrus that 
grew on the banks of the Nile, or on clay tablets, as 
the people of Assyria did, or on the skins of ani¬ 
mals. Nor do we know exactly what alphabet they 
used. Probably their letters were made much like 
those on the Moabite Stone. It is likely that it was 
their songs that were written down first; then they 
were gathered up into books, but all such books have 
been lost. We know the names of some of these col¬ 
lections of songs, however. In the twenty-first chap- 

100 


NEW FOECES IN ISRAEL 


101 


ter of Numbers there is a short quotation from The 
Booh of the Wars of Jehovah. Probably “The Song 
of the Well,” which is quoted in the same chapter, 
was also from that book. In Joshua 10:12 is a 
short quotation from a poem which we are told in 
verse 13 is taken from The Booh of the Upright. 
The same book is mentioned in 11 Samuel 1:18 as 
the source of David’s beautiful lament for Saul. 
Probably it was a book about the heroes who had 
been upright and brave. 

Not far from this time people also began to put 
together some story books. The names of these 
books are lost, but many of their stories have been 
saved. Modern scholars have named the oldest 
collection of these The Judean Story Booh. This 
seems to have been written in the Judean kingdom. 
It began back at the creation of the world to tell 
stories of the Hebrews. It always called the He¬ 
brew god “Yahweh.” 

The Ephraimite Story Booh is a modern name 
for th*e next oldest story book. It was written in 
north Israel, which was often called Ephraim. It 
also began at the earliest times to tell the story 
of the Hebrew. It often used, instead of Yahweh, 
the name Elohim, which is the plural of El. Today 
we have a great many of the stories from these two 
ancient books because many years after they ap¬ 
peared somebody saved them by weaving them to¬ 
gether into one book. Now the older stories have 
to be unraveled from the later ones because they 
are still woven together in our Bible. The stories 


102 


FEOM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


of the making of the world and of the coming of the 
flood which we have imagined ourselves to have 
heard from the story tellers at the feasts are from 
the oldest of these, The Judean Story Booh. 
We can’t help wishing that all of it had been 
saved. 

This beginning of books came at a time when the 
kingdom of Israel was becoming prosperous. Peo¬ 
ple now had time to think of something else than 
making their crops grow for their food. After the 
reign of King Jehu of Israel, the towns began to 
grow into cities, and when Jeroboam II had ascended 
the throne he ruled almost as large a territory as 
David had conquered. A short account of him 
says, 

He restored the boundary-line of Israel from the en¬ 
trance of Hamath to the sea of Arabah, according to the 
word of Yahweh, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his 
servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was 
of Gath-hepher. (II Kings 14:25) 

The “sea of Arabah” means the Dead Sea and 
Hamath is a pass in the mountains north of Da¬ 
mascus. Not that Jeroboam II actually ruled as 
king over all that large tract of land but he made 
the people pay him tribute, probably even little 
Judah. For over forty years this second Jeroboam 
reigned but we have no more information about 
him or the prophet Jonah connected with him. But 
we do have one little scrap from that age which 
shows that they had grown to have the idea of 


NEW FORCES IN ISRAEL 


103 


private property. When some explorers were re¬ 
cently digging at the mound where the old city of 
Megiddo once was, they found a seal which comes 
from the time of Jeroboam II. It reads: “Belong¬ 
ing to Shema, servant of Jeroboam.” We do not 
know who this Shema was, but we can imagine him 
using this very seal to stamp things with, so that 
no one else would take them. 

More important still, we have a hook which gives 
a vivid picture of the time—the oldest writing in 
the Bible we still have as a book, the Prophecy of 
Amos. If we could have visited Israel in the davs 
of Jeroboam II we should have found, according to 
Amos, a very proud and prosperous people, living 
in cities surprisingly like ours. As a matter of 
fact, as we read we feel almost as though we were 
visiting Bethel in Israel because of this vivid ac¬ 
count written by Amos, the shepherd. 

Let us take a picture from this hook. Suppose 
you are attending a feast at Bethel. 

There stands the little temple in which is the 
golden calf which Jeroboam had set up; yonder 
are great rocks on the hillside, just in front of the 
temple. There stand the priests sacrificing the ani¬ 
mals which the people are bringing, and then giv¬ 
ing back part of the meat for the people to eat at 
the feast. All about are priests and singers and 
story tellers and women dancers. Many are drink¬ 
ing wine and becoming gayer and noisier. 

Suddenly a deep voice rings out above the laugh¬ 
ter ; all look that way and see a man of the desert, 



104 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


with his shepherd’s crook, standing among the rocks. 
This is what he is saying: 

Yahweh roars from Zion 

And utters his voice from Jerusalem; 

The pastures of the shepherds mourn, 

And the top of Carmel withers. 

“Oh, he is a man from the south, he talks of 
Jerusalem; come let us hear what he has to say.” 
The people gather around for a little entertainment. 
Next he talks about Damascus. 

Thus hath Yahweh said: 

For three transgressions of Damascus, 

Yea, for four, I will not revoke it; 

Because they have threshed Gilead 
With threshing instruments of iron.” 

Of course Damascus had committed transgressions! 
Everybody knew that they were always fighting 
down in Gilead and had practically destroyed the 
country. Everybody was ready to agree with the 
speaker when he declared, 

I will break the bar of Damascus. 

The people of Syria shall go into captivity. 

Truly, thought the people, this is an interesting 
man from the desert; he wants to punish our ene¬ 
mies; whom next will he doom to punishment! 

Thus has Yahweh said: 

For three transgressions of Gaza, 


NEW FORCES IN ISRAEL 


105 


1 ea, for four, I will not revoke it; 

Because they carried into complete captivity. 

A whole people, 

To deliver them up to Edom. 

(Amos 1: 6) 

Slavery Yahweh has always hated; because the 
Philistines had been so cruel as to sell one whole 
tribe to the people of Edom, they ought to be pun¬ 
ished. Their great cities should perish. 

Therefore I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, 

And it shall devour her palaces; 

And I will turn my hand against Ekron. 

And I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, 

And the sceptre-holder from Ashkelon, 

And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish. 

(Amos 1:7) 

Next he told of Ammon who also had been cruel 
to Gilead; for this the Ammonites should go into 
exile. Moab, too, had done something that the des¬ 
ert people considered terrible—they “burned the 
bones of the king of Edom to lime.” Everybody 
thought it necessary to bury even his worst enemy, 
and to burn his body seemed a special kind of cruelty. 
Moab should be punished. By this time the speaker 
had won his hearers; certainly all their neighbors 
should be punished. Who would not like to have 
their enemies fall? On went the voice: 

Thus has Yahweh said: 

For three transgressions of Israel, 


106 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Yea, for four, I will not revoke it; 

Because they sell the righteous for money, 

And the needy for a pair of shoes. 

And because garments taken in pledge they spread out 
Beside every altar, 

And the wine of such as have been fined they drink, 

In the houses of their gods. 

Who crush the head of the poor, 

And the way of the humble they turn aside, 

And a man and his judge deal according to agreement, 
And so profane my holy name. 

(Amos 2: 6-8) 

Israel to be punished? Does he mean to say that 
Yahweh will actually punish the people of Israel 
because they sell the needy for a pair of shoes? 
But if the needy haven’t any money, why shouldn’t 
a man sell them into slavery or have them put in 
prison and use the money to buy shoes? Who cares 
for the poor? 

So, many of the rich people who listened to the 
prophet must have thought. Some of them were 
wearing garments that they had taken from people 
who owed them debts; some of them had brought 
wane to the feast which they had got from a neigh¬ 
bor by having him fined for something. Many 
people had grown rich by crushing the poor, and by 
taking everything that they had so that they had no 
food and clothing. 

Perhaps you. are thinking, 4 ‘But were there 


NEW FORCES IN ISRAEL 


107 


no laws in those days and no judges to whom the 
poor people could go to have things made right V 1 
Yes, there were judges who sat by the gates of the 
cities where everybody could come to them and tell 
his troubles, but this is what happened. If a rich 
man had taken something away from a poor man, 
he would hurry to the judge before the poor man 
could get there. Then he would say to the judge, 
“I want you to agree with me that when that poor 
man comes and tells you how I took his garment and 
his wine you will not listen to him at all. I want 
you to refuse to help him get them back.” Then 
the rich man would give the judge a present and 
the judge liked the present so well that he would 
promise. So what could the poor man do? He 
was helpless and might die of hunger and cold. 
Every one knew that this was wrong, for it was not 
very different from Ahab’s stealing of Naboth’s 
vineyard, yet it surprised every one to have a 
prophet speak of this injustice and unkindness in 
Israel. 

The prophet next reminded them of the times 
long ago, when Yahweh freed them from Egyptian 
slavery. 

And yet it was I who brought you up from the land of 
Egypt, 

And led you in the wilderness forty years, 

And brought you hither to possess the land of the Amor- 
ites. 

And it was I who destroyed from before them the Amor- 
ite, 


108 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

Whose height was like that of the cedars, and he was 
strong as the oaks; 

But I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from 
beneath. 

(Amos 2: 9, 10) 

Because Israel has not been true to the freedom 
which Yahweh gave to her, but her people now rob 
each other, she must be destroyed down to her very 
roots. In that terrible day of punishment no one 
will be able to escape. 

Then shall refuge fail the swift, 

And the strong shall not strengthen his force, 

And the warrior shall not deliver himself 
And he that handles the bow shall not stand. 

And the swift of foot shall not rescue himself, 

And the stoutest of heart among the warriors; 

And the skilled shall not deliver himself, 

And he that rideth a horse shall not flee away in that day. 

(Amos 2 :13-16) 

No matter how fast you can run or what strong 
weapons you have, you cannot get away from the 
punishment for your unkindness. 

But what is the power that is going to bring this 
punishment upon Israel? It is Assyria, the king¬ 
dom by the two rivers. Its king had come over and 
made Jehu get on his knees before him, and again 
Assyria would come. Would Israel be able to stand 
up against them? No, because they were learning 
to rob and hate each other. Yahweh would not 
care to save such an unrighteous nation. 


NEW FORCES IN ISRAEL 


109 


Now at last has come the kind of man who can 
make the Hebrew people truly a great nation! He 
can show them that however rich they are, they can 
not be a great nation, until they are righteous. 

Who is this prophet with a new message for 
Israel? Perhaps some of the people went home 
from Bethel wondering where he came from. In 
the next chapter we must make his acquaintance, 
in his own home. 


CHAPTER X 


AMOS, THE SHEPHERD 

“Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa” 
(Amos 1:1) was a desert man whose voice startled 
the feasters at Bethel. He lived to the south of 
Jerusalem on a hill which looked down a deep valley 
to the Dead Sea. All about him, whichever way he 
looked, were barren rolling hills. He had to travel 
over those hills with his sheep in order to find food 
enough for them. 

“A shepherd am I, and a dresser of sycamores, ” 
Amos once said of himself. This indicates that 
Amos was often down in the valleys where the trees 
grow. Perhaps he looked after the sycamore fruit 
while his sheep grazed. Amos was an out-door 
man. Here are some of the words he uses about 
Yahweh and the stars and night: 

His name is Yahweh, 

He is the creator of the Pleiades and Orion; 

He turns the murk into morning, 

And day into night darkens; 

He calls for the waters of the sea, 

And pours them out on the face of the earth. 

(Amos 5:8) 

These words show us that Amos often watched the 

day turn into night and the stars come out. Also he 

no 




AMOS, THE SHEPHERD 111 

probably often started off with his sheep so early in 
the morning that he saw the night turn into day. 
And he thought as he looked up at the stars or saw 
the sun rise over the hill-tops, “Yahweh creates 
this light. r ’ And as he saw a storm gather in black 
clouds over the Mediterranean sea and come and 
pour itself out on the hills he thought, “Yahweh 
gathers up that water from the sea and pours it out 
as a blessing upon the land.” At another time 
Amos said: 

For, lo! he forms the mountains and creates the wind, 
And he tells man what is his thought; 

He makes dawn darkness, 

And treads upon the heights of the earth. 

(Amos 4: 13) 

To Amos, Yahweh not only created the mountains 
long ago but he is here now, sometimes stepping 
from hill-top to hill-top as he travels. He is here, 
though we cannot see him, just as the wind is—he 
“creates the wind.” But more exciting than this, 
Yahweh speaks to man in his heart; “He tells man 
what is his thought.” So you see Amos had much 
to think about besides his sheep and his sycamore 
fruit as he went around about the barren hill of 
Tekoa. He heard the voice of Yahweh; he says, 

Yahweh took me from behind the sheep 
And Yahweh said unto me: 

Go, prophesy unto my people, Israel. 

(Amos 7 : 15) 


112 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Perhaps you think it was not strange for Yahweh 
to speak to Amos because you know that Amos was 
one of the prophets, but listen to what he says, “I 
am no prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son.” (Amos 
7:15) 

This means that Amos did not tell people where 
to find lost articles as some did who were called 
prophets; that is, he did not earn his living that 
way. He was a plain shepherd who felt that God 
spoke to him and gave him a message to the people. 

Why did he go to Bethel to give his message? 
Probably he went up there sometimes to sell his wool 
and he was shocked at what he saw at the Bethel 
high-place, especially shocked at the way the rich 
treated the poor. Indeed, it seemed to him so 
terrible that he thought that Yahweh would certainly 
destroy Israel by the coming of the Assyrians. 

Amos used the language of his desert when he 
went to warn the people about Assyria: 4 ‘ Can two 

walk together except they have made an appoint¬ 
ment?” (Amos 3:3) 

Down in the desert there were no roads, only 
rough paths, and Amos doubtless went right over 
the hills without trying to follow a road. Naturally 
you would not be likely to meet any one unless you 
made an appointment. Perhaps you will remember 
that Samuel said to Saul that three men would meet 
him at the oak of Tabor. But unless you agreed to 
meet at a tree or some such landmark, you might 
travel all day 'without meeting any one you knew. 
Now, says Amos, you are sinful and your punish- 


AMOS, THE SHEPHEED 


113 


ment is coining; these two things could not have 
met if Yahweh had not appointed them. He makes 
the same point in another way. Assyria he thinks 
of as a lion roaring as he had often heard them in 
the desert. When he heard that sound he knew that 
some little animal was being killed by a lion. 


Does a lion roar in the jungle when there is no prey for 
him ? 

Does a bird fall upon the ground if there is no bait set 
for it? 

Does a trap fly up from the ground unless it is catching 
something ? 


(Amos 3: 4, 5) 


It seems that people in the land of Amos caught 
birds in traps. In the same way Amos means you 
can tell by the coming of the great Assyrian power 
westward that it will catch Israel in a trap and will 
crush it as an animal does its prey. 

The lion hath roared; who is there that does not fear? 
The Lord Yahweh has spoken; who is it that cannot 
prophesy ? 

(Amos 3:8) 


Amos does not try to save the feelings of his rich 
hearers. He tells them that there will not be any 
more of them left when Assyria has attacked them 
than he has sometimes seen left of a sheep which 
had been attacked by a lion. Amos heard the noise 
in the sheepfold perhaps in the night and he ran to 


114 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


rescue the sheep but what did he find? Only two 
legs and a bit of an ear! 

Thus has Yahweh said: As the shepherd rescues 
From the mouth of the lion, two legs or a piece of an ear, 
So the children of Israel shall be rescued, they who dwell 
in Samaria, 

In the corner of a couch, in the damask of a divan. 

{Amos 3: 12) 

You can be sure that the people who sat curled upon 
beautiful couches did not like to hear Amos preach. 
Some of them were rich enough to have one house 
for the winter and another for the summer. Some 
had white marble houses which they called ivory. 
But Amos shouted to them, 

And I will smite the winter house together with the sum¬ 
mer house, 

And the houses of ivory shall perish. 

{Amos 3: 15) 

Amos had no pity on the women of Israel; he called 
them cows! He said that they ill-treated the poor 
and asked their husbands for wine. 

Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, 

Who dwell in the mountain of Samaria, 

Who injure the poor, and crush the needy, 

Who say to your husbands, Bring, that we may drink. 

{Amos 4:1) 

Then he said that they would be led forth out of the 
city with fish hooks in their noses. Not a pleasant 
picture for elegant ladies! 


AMOS, THE SHEPHERD 


115 


One thing that you would often have heard people 
talking about if you had walked about the streets 
of Bethel or Samaria in those days was 4 4 The Day of 
Yahweh” that wonderful day when all one’s wishes 
would come true. Jeroboam II had been so success¬ 
ful and so many people had become rich that they 
thought, surely the day of Yahweh is almost here. 
What a bright day it will be! But this is what 
Amos said: 

Alas for those who long for the day of Yahweh; 

It is darkness and not light. 

As when one flees from a lion, and a bear meets him; 
Or goes into the house, and leans his hand upon the wall, 
and a serpent bites him. 

Shall not Yahweh’s day be darkness and not light? 

Yea, deep darkness without any brightness in it. 

(Amos 5 : 18-20) 

All this because of the unkindness of the rich to 
the poor. 

One reason that it was hard to make these people 
see their faults was that they thought themselves so 
religious. But Amos said that Yahweh was dis¬ 
pleased with their religious feasts because they were 
unjust to each other even there. If a man cheated 
his neighbor it did not make him right with God to 
go to a religious feast. 

I hate, I despise your feasts, 

And I will not smell the savor of your festivals, 

For, although ye offer me your burnt offerings and meal- 
offerings, I will not accept them. 


116 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

Take away from me the noise of thy songs and the melody 
of thy lyres; 

And let justice roll as waters, 

And righteousness as an everflowing stream. 

(Amos 5: 21-24) 

Notice that word justice; it is the great word of 
Amos. He made justice a part of the Yahweh 
religion; he added that thought to their understand¬ 
ing of what God requires of his people. 

But, alas, the people of Israel, the northern king¬ 
dom, were not ready to accept his teaching and 
Yahweh’s commands. So they must perish. Amos 
was so sure that Israel would not reform and there¬ 
fore would surely cease to be a nation that one day 
he sang her funeral song: 

Hear this word 

Which I take up against you, 

Even a dirge, 0 house of Israel; 

For thus has said the Lord Yahweh: 

She shall fall not to rise again, 

The virgin Israel; 

She shall be hurled down upon her own soil, 

With none to raise her up. 

(Amos 5 : 1, 2) 

Sometimes Amos offered a little hope, telling them 
that Yahweh cried to them, “Seek me and live.” 
But he saw so little sign of repentance that he 
generally speaks as if Israel were doomed. 

Finally the day came when the priest at Bethel 


AMOS, THE SHEPHERD 


117 


decided that this shepherd’s words must be stopped. 
So he sent a messenger to the king, probably over in 
his palace in Samaria, telling him that Amos had 
said that Israel would go into captivity and the 
king die by the sword. Then Amaziah, the priest, 
went to Amos, probably going out in all his splendid 
priestly robes of authority to where Amos was 
preaching and he said to him, 

0 thou seer! Go, flee thee to the land of Judah; 

And eat there, and prophesy there. 

But at Bethel thou shalt no longer prophesy; 

For it is the king’s sanctuary, 

And it is the royal residence. 

And Amos answered, and said to Amaziah; 

I am no prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son; 

But a shepherd am I, and a dresser of sycamores; 

And Yahweh took me from behind the sheep, 

And Yahweh said unto me: 

Go, prophesy against my people, Israel. 

(Amos 7 : 12-15) 

Here is one of the great scenes of the w T orld, a man 
standing up against a priest, a man not even claim¬ 
ing to be a prophet but having something important 
to say. By this speech Amos became the first of 
the great prophets of Israel, the first of a new kind 
of prophet in the world’s history. 

Amos was forced to leave Bethel but when he got 
back to Tekoa, his message was still burning within 
him so hotly that he wrote it in a book. We have 
this book today, probably not very different from 


118 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


the way he wrote it. It is the oldest book in our 
Bible. We have seen that there are older songs 
and stories but there is no older book that has been 
kept together. 

The world cannot be thankful enough for the idea 
of justice as set forth by Amos. Out of it has grown 
all that we mean by democracy,—a fair chance for 
everybody and every soul valuable to God. All 
great nations today try to come up to the standard 
of justice set forth by Amos. Is it not wonderful 
that a shepherd should thus help the world forward? 


CHAPTER XI 


HOSEA AND ISRAEL’S DOOM 

When Amos told the people of Israel that they 
would be carried away into captivity they laughed at 
him. Were they not rich and prosperous? Look 
at their splendid palaces! Was not Jeroboam II a 
powerful king who could defend them? 

But Amos knew what he was talking about; he 
knew that those palaces were full of wicked people 
and he knew that a new and terrible king had come 
to the throne in Assyria. His name was Tiglath- 
pileser. In his writings he loved to boast, “I de¬ 
stroyed, devastated, burned with fire. ’’ He also had 
a new plan for destroying countries; he carried their 
people into captivity. Far away from their homes 
they were taken and put among the king’s sub¬ 
jects. What could they do, then, except to work for 
the king to earn their bread? But the Israelites 
thought he surely would not carry them off, for they 
were splendid people! 

But trouble soon came in the following way. 
When Jeroboam II died, his son Zechariah as¬ 
cended the throne, and then troubles began. It was 
wickedness in the palaces that caused the trouble 
first. One man, jealous of Zechariah, killed him and 
took the throne. Thus was ended the line of kings 

119 



120 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


which Jeroboam I had founded to free the people 
from slavery. There were no more real kings of 
Israel, only adventurers stooping even to murder to 
reach the throne. 

This was the state of things when Tiglath-pileser 
came marching west. Now the people no longer 
laughed, they trembled with fear. But for the 
moment they escaped, for the murderer on Israel’s 
throne took money and costly gifts and bribed the 
king of Assyria. This time the king was willing to 
be bought off, and he marched away with his gold. 

In these dark days there spoke another prophet 
in Israel, Hosea, a man who lived among them. He 
cried out to them, 

Hear the word of Yahweh, 

0 children of Israel; 

Yahweh has a contention 
With the inhabitants of the land; 

For there is no truth, nor love, 

Nor knowledge of Bod in the land. 

(Hosea 4: 1) 

What did Hosea mean by saying that there was 4 ‘no 
truth” in the land? He meant that people did not 
speak the truth to each other. Where there is “no 
truth” there is sure to be “no love.” This is the 
kind of dreadful place that Israel became in those 
days. Hosea said that he could find nothing but 
‘ ‘ swearing and lying and killing and stealing. ’ ’ Of 
course such people could not have any “knowledge 
of God” for God hates such things. And so Hosea 


HOSE A AND ISRAEL’S DOOM 


121 


said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowl¬ 
edge.” (Hos. 4: 6)) 

Yon will remember from the sermons of Amos 
that the wicked people of Israel tried to be very re¬ 
ligions. They still went to the altar at Bethel and 
worshiped before the golden calf which Jeroboam I 
had set up. They offered many sacrifices and 
talked much about their love to Yahweh, but Hosea 
saw that it all meant nothing while they were so 
wicked. Like Amos he spoke to them as if he were 
Yahweh: 

What can I make of you, 0 Ephraim? 

What can I make of you, 0 Israel? 

Since your love is like a morning-cloud, 

Yea, like the dew which early goes away. 

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, 

I have slain them by the words of my mouth, 

And my judgment is like the light which goeth forth. 

For it is love that I delight in, and not sacrifice; 

Yea, knowledge of God, and not burnt offerings. 

(Hos. 6: 4-6) 

Hosea was a father of three children, two boys 
and a girl. He gave strange names to his children 
because he was so full of sorrow about Israel. Of 
his first son he said: 

Call his name Jezreel; 

For yet a little while, 

And I will avenge the blood of Jezreel 
Upon the house of Jehu 


122 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


And will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. 
And it shall come to pass in that day, 

That I will break the bow of Israel, 

In the valley of Jezreel. 

{Eos. 1: 4, 5) 

You will remember that Jezreel was the place where 
Jehu overthrew the wicked house of Ahab. But 
since then the house of Jehu had become just as 
wicked as Ahab’s and must be overthrown too. 
When a daughter was born to Hosea he said: 

Call her name No-pity; (Lo-ruhamah) 

For I will no longer 

Have pity for the house of Israel 

That I should at all forgive them. 

{Eos. 1: 6) 

Another son Hosea called Not-my-people (Lo- 
ammi). We do not know whether he actually called 
his children by these names all the time or not, but 
they must have known anyway that their father was 
often full of sorrow. One reason that he was so sad 
was that their mother often went off and left them 
alone. He had to be both father and mother to his 
children. It nearly broke Hosea r s heart to think 
that a mother would go off and leave her own chil¬ 
dren and husband. And what she had done seemed 
exactly what Israel had done; she had left Yahweh 
who loved her. So Hosea put his two sorrows to¬ 
gether, his sorrow over Israel and his sorrow over 
his wife. He represents Yahweh as saying, 


HOSEA AND ISRAEL’S DOOM 


123 


When Israel was a child, then I loved him 
And called my son out of Egypt. 

The more the prophets called them, 

The more they went away from them. 

They sacrificed unto the Baalim, 

And burned incense to graven images. 

( Hos . 11:1) 

Just as he had tried and tried to call the mother 
back to her home, so Yahweh had tried to call Israel 
back to him, but she went off to the Baalim at the 
high-places. Just as Hosea had to teach his chil¬ 
dren to walk and had often healed their sorrows and 
their sickness, so Yahweh had shown his care to 
Israel, or Ephraim, as he sometimes calls Israel. 

Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, 

I took them on my arms, 

But they knew not that I healed them. 

(Hos. 11: 3) 

How many times Hosea had taken his children up in 
his arms to comfort them! How well he remem¬ 
bered the days when he taught them how to take 
their first steps! Now he saw T that Yahweh had 
been a tender father to Israel in the same way, lead¬ 
ing them out of Egypt and teaching them how 
to w r alk as a nation. Yet Israel was untrue to 
Yahweh. 

Now, this is the first time that any one had thought 
of Yahweh as a father! As a leader and judge and 
king they have learned to think of him since the days 


124 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


that they wandered in the desert. But Hosea now 
comes forward with the most beautiful idea of all 
—Yahweh is a loving father! 

Today almost every boy and girl thinks of God 
as a great Father. As they walk along with their 
hands in their earthly father’s hand, they can look 
around at the sky and trees and think of the great 
Father who loves us all. But these children of 
Israel did not know for a long time that they were 
being led, or that they could call God, Father. It 
was Hosea, who had to take care of his children him¬ 
self in place of their mother, who first told the chil¬ 
dren of Israel that God was taking hold of their 
hands just like a father. 

One other beautiful thing Hosea did which we 
must not forget—he said that Yahweh would try to 
bring Israel back to himself sometime in the future. 
You will remember that Amos said that the Israel¬ 
ites would be wiped off the face of the earth because 
of their wickedness. Hosea, too, thought they would 
be terribly punished, but he loved them so much that 
he told them that Yahweh said, 

I will heal their backsliding, 

I will love them freely, 

For mine anger is turned away. 

(. Bos . 14: 4) 

In Eastern lands all people love the dew because it 
makes things grow where there is no rain. Around 
Mount Lebanon, in the land of Israel, there was al¬ 
ways a heavy dew that kept things growing and 


HOSE A AND ISRAEL’S DOOM 


125 


green all the year. The dew all over the grass and 
trees seemed like the kindness of God to all people. 
So Hosea said of Yahweh, 

I will be as the dew to Israel: 

He shall blossom as the lily 

And cast forth his roots as Lebanon. 

His branches shall spread, 

And his beauty shall be as the olive tree, 

And his fragrance as Lebanon. 

(Hos. 14: 5-7) 

But, alas, first must come the punishment. One of the 
murderers who occupied Israel’s throne was named 
Pekah. He brought the nation’s punishment nearer 
by his deeds. He made war against Judah, and by 
this act brought back again that terrible king, 
Tiglath-pileser. But before finishing the story of 
Israel we must look over into Judah and see what 
they are thinking and how they affect Israel, for 
it is Judah’s king that invites back Israel’s final 
conqueror, Tiglath-pileser. 

Israel was the more important kingdom ever since 
the separation from Judah. Her people had a 
chance to become a great nation. Why did they 
fail? Because they did not keep to their ideals. 
They broke away from 'Solomon because he was an 
oppressor of the people, but it was not long before 
the kings of Israel became oppressors too. The rich 
also oppressed the poor. Israel did not take advan¬ 
tage of her chance. 

No nation is great where either a king or a class 


126 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


is unjust to the rest of the people. Amos and Hosea 
tried to save the people from destruction because 
of their injustice, but could not. They blindly 
rushed on to their doom. 


CHAPTER XII 


ISAIAH AND JUDAH 

At first the kingdom of Judah was poor and full 
of trouble. In the days after the rebellion of Jero¬ 
boam I, the glory of Solomon’s reign faded quickly. 
The kings of his family who came after him did little 
to help Judah to become great. 

Asa reigned a long time and, on the whole, well. 
But he did one thing that brought much trouble,— 
he asked the king of Damascus to help him fight 
against Israel. Damascus is a splendid old city far 
up north at the foot of a mountain. Down the 
mountain side rushes a beautiful river whose waters, 
spreading abroad, fertilize a luxuriant plain in 
which the city stands. Around the plain are deserts, 
mountains, and marshy lakes. This means that 
the king of Damascus has always felt himself to be 
rich and powerful. 

What do you suppose he thought when Asa, the 
king of the poor little country of Judah, asked him 
to come down and help him fight his brother Israel! 
Perhaps he said to himself, Ah, this is my chance. 
Now I can get some of the land of these little na¬ 
tions ! So he brought his soldiers and attacked Is¬ 
rael from the north, while Asa attacked her from the 

south. The plan was successful, and the king of 

127 


128 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Damascus added many of the villages of Israel to 
his kingdom. After this there was much fighting 
between these three kingdoms. This kept Judah 
poor and small and unimportant. 

When Uzziah was king, Judah became more pros¬ 
perous. Then a young prophet arose who made 
Judah important—the young man Isaiah. One day 
as this young man was going up to the temple in 
Jerusalem it seemed as if Yahweh was there with 
his angels. The whole temple seemed full of Yah¬ 
weh ’s glory and a great voice rang out, saying, 

Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of Hosts, 

The whole earth is full of his glory. 

This made the young man, Isaiah, bow down in 
terror and sav, 

Woe is me! for I am undone; 

Because I am a man of unclean lips, 

And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. 

As Isaiah was bowed down in sorrow for his sins 
and those of his people it seemed as if one of the 
angels touched his lips and said, 

Lo! this has touched thy lips; 

Thy iniquity is gone 

And thy sin forgiven. 

This made Isaiah look up with brightness in his 
face to think that his sins were forgiven and that 
Yahweh would not call him wicked. Then there 


ISAIAH AND JUDAH 


129 


seemed to ring out a great voice filling the whole 
temple: 

Whom shall I send 
And who will go for us? 

Then the young man, Isaiah, stood up straight 
and with all his might answered the great voice of 
Yahweh saying, 

Here am I; send me. 

The voice then cried, 

Go! 

(Isa. 6: 3-9) 

Isaiah knew, then, that he must go out into the 
streets of Jerusalem and talk to the people about 
their sins. He must make Jerusalem holy because 
Yahweh is holy. To be holy means to be clean and 
pure and good at heart. You cannot be unkind to 
any one if you are holy. 

Now one of the sins of Judah was that her rich 
people were unkind to her poor. This, then, was 
one of the things that the young Isaiah said as he 
went out to speak to the people: 

The spoil of the poor is in your houses: 

What mean ye that ye crush my people, 

And grind the face of the poor ? 

Saith Yahweh, Yahweh of hosts. 

(Isa. 3: 14, 15) 

You may be sure that the rich people would not like 
to be told that the beautiful rugs and garments they 


130 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


had in their houses were made by the labor of the 
poor and that the rich had no right to them. They 
would not like to be told that they were the ones who 
crushed the poor, not giving them food and clothes 
enough to keep them well and happy. You may be 
sure also that the rich did not make it very pleasant 
for the young man Isaiah. But did he stop on that 
account? Not at all. He kept finding new ways 
to bring his message to the people. We shall see how 
he did this in the little drama which follows: 


ISAIAH, THE MINSTREL PROPHET 
A Scene from the Life of Isaiah 

Imagine yourselves in the street of an eastern city. Let two 
or three take up their stand at the side of the street to sell their 
wares, scarfs, jewelry, brass dishes, etc. As people begin to come 
along the street the pedlars shout out their wares. 

1st Pedlar: Dishes for your curds, 0 women of Judah, fine 
dishes for your cheese. (Two women examine them.) 

2nd Pedlar: Scarfs of scarlet worthy of the head of a sheik. 
(There is a buzz of conversation as the people talk over the bar¬ 
gains. In the midst of the hubbub Isaiah appears with harp in 
hand.) 

A Man: See, here comes a singer; let us hear him. 

(Isaiah steps up on a seat between the pedlars and the people 
gather round him.) 

Isaiah : 

A song will I sing of my friend, 

A love song touching his vineyard. 

A Woman : Ah, a song of love. 

Isaiah : 

A vineyard belongs to my friend, 


ISAIAH AND JUDAH 


131 


On a hill that is fruitful and sunny; 

He digged it and cleared it of stones, 

And planted there vines that are choice; 

A tower he built in the midst, 

And hewed also therein a wine vat; 

A Man : Truly a beautiful vineyard. 

Isaiah : 

And he looked to find grapes that are good; 

Alas, it bore grapes that are wild. 

Ye, in Jerusalem dwelling, 

And ye who are freemen of Judah, 

Judge ye, I pray, between me 
And my cherished vineyard. 

What could have been done for my vineyard 
That I had not done? 

Crowd: (to one another ) What, indeed? 

Isaiah : 

When I looked to find grapes that are good, 

Why bore it grapes that are wild? 

Crowd: Why wild grapes? 

Isaiah : 

And now let me give you to know 

What I purpose to do to my vineyard: 

I will take away its hedge, 

That it be eaten up, 

I will break through its avails, 

That it be trodden down; 

Yea, I will make it a waste, 

Neither pruned nor weeded. 

Crowd: Truly a bad vineyard; he should destroy it. 

Isaiah : 

It shall shoot up in thorns and briers, 

And the clouds will I enjoin that they rain not upon it. 

A Man: (to Isaiah) An unworthy vineyard; destroy it. 

(The crowd nod agreement.) 


132 


FEOM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Isaiah : 

For the vineyard of Yahweh Sabaoth 
Is the house of Israel, 

(Great consternation in the crowd ) 

And the men of Judah his cherished plantation. 

And he looked for justice, but behold! bloodshed; 

For righteousness, but behold! an outcry. 

A Man: Come, hear him no longer. A false prophet! 

(As the crowd withdraws, shaking their fists at Isaiah, he calls 
after them —) 

Isaiah : 

Woe unto them that join house to house 
Who lay field to field till there be no room. 

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, 

That they may follow strong drink. 

Woe unto them that justify the wicked for a reward; 

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. 

(to one young man who stayed with him) 

Come, let us walk in the light of Yahweh. 

(Isaiah walks out with his arm around the shoulders of the 
young man.) 


CHAPTER, XIII 


THE TRAGIC CHOICE MADE BY A KING 

Ahaz was a young man of twenty years when he 
came to the throne of Judah. He determined to be 
bolder than the kings before him in worshiping all 
gods. He “made his son to pass through the fire 
according to the abominations of the heathen”; {II 
Kings 16: 3) that is, he burned his son as a sacrifice 
to some god. He tried thus to be popular with all 
the people, but did not care whether he did right. 
He did not make friends with the young prophet 
Isaiah, who could not approve of his deeds. 

In a few years he found himself in trouble. The 
king of Damascus, Rezin, and Pekah, the assassin 
who called himself king of Israel, joined together in 
an alliance to fight Assyria, for it was now certain 
that this great power was coming west. They 
wanted Ahaz to join with them but he did not con¬ 
sent. So they marched their armies right down to 
Jerusalem and prepared to attack the city, and Ahaz 
and the people were frightened. Isaiah tells us of 
Ahaz that, “his heart and the heart of the people 
shook as the trees of the forest shake before the 
wind.” {Isa. 7:2) 

Now Jerusalem, you remember, had only one 
spring which was outside the city walls. The king 

133 


134 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


was afraid that the armies might take this spring, 
so he went out to see how to keep the water for the 
city. As he was looking at the spring Isaiah came 
before him, leading a little boy by the hand. And he 
said to the king, 

Take heed and be quiet; 

Fear not, neither let thine heart be faint 

Because of these two tails of smoking firebrands. 

(Isa. 7: 4) 

Isaiah knew that the only power to be afraid of 
was great Assyria, and that both Israel and the king 
of Damascus would probably fall before Assyria 
and become only two “smoking firebrands.’’ He 
wanted Ahaz not to fight and not to pay money to 
any of them. He wanted him to trust in Yahweh 
and keep out of political alliances. He told the king 
to ask a sign to make sure that this would be safe. 
But the king said, “I will not ask, neither will I 
tempt Yahweh.” (Isa. 7:12) Then Isaiah told him 
that a little child should come into the world who 
would be named Immanuel, God-with-us. And be¬ 
fore this child should be old enough “to refuse evil 
and choose the good” those two kings camped out¬ 
side Jerusalem should see their own countries un¬ 
peopled by Assyria. (Isa. 7:14—16) Why, then, 
be afraid of them? 

But Ahaz thought he could outwit the kings who 
were besieging Jerusalem. So he sent secret mes¬ 
sengers to the king of Assyria to tell him that these 


TRAGIC CHOICE MADE BY A KING 135 


kings were plotting against Judah, and asked him 
to attack them. He thought that would cause them 
to hurry home to save their own cities, and the As¬ 
syrian king would then count him as one of his 
friends. 

This was the tragic choice of Ahaz. He refused 
to believe Isaiah’s message from God, and turned 
for help to Judah’s future persecutor and de¬ 
stroyer ! He even wrote a letter to the king of As¬ 
syria saying: 

“I am thy slave and thy son; save me from the 
king of Syria (Damascus) and the king of Israel, 
who are attacking me.” (II Kings 16: 7) Thus Ahaz 
sold himself and Judah into slavery. He laid a 
burden upon the people from which they would 
never escape, which indeed led later to the long 
captivity of Judah in the land of the two great 
rivers. Isaiah seems to be the only one who saw 
plainly what would follow the king’s choice. He 
made up his mind to try to keep the people from 
supporting the king. This is the story of how he 
made his appeal to the people: 

One day Isaiah took with him two men and, carry¬ 
ing a great tablet in his arms, went into one of the 
busy parts of the city, perhaps the market-place of 
Jerusalem. People who were buying beautiful 
cloths or jewelry or pieces of pottery would be sur¬ 
prised to see this strange-looking tablet set up 
against one of the bazaars, and a young man writ¬ 
ing on it. In the Eastern world nobody is ever in a 


136 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


hurry, so you may be sure that they all left their 
bargaining and crowded around to see what he was 
writing. And this is what they saw: 


(haste) 

(the booty) 
(speed) 

(the prey) 


MAHER 
SHALAL 
HASH 
B AZ 


What could the man mean by writing such terrible 
words! Who does he think will come pouncing 
upon Judah like an animal upon its prey and carry 
her people off for booty! It was none other than 
the great power of Assyria that Ahaz the king was 
calling in to help him—a power able to destroy not 
only Damascus and Israel, but also Judah. 

The words of the writing on the tablet Isaiah also 
gave as a name to his little new-born son. Imagine 
a little baby named Maher-shalal-hash-baz! His 
mother would have to shorten it if she wished to call 
him quickly! Isaiah had a special reason for giv¬ 
ing this strange name to his boy. He wanted to be 
able to* say to the people, 

“ Before the child shall have knowledge to cry My 
father, and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and the 
spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the king of 
Assyria/ ’ (Isa. 8 : 4) 

You know that “father” and “mother” are the 
first words that most children speak. Isaiah meant, 
then, that in a year or two, before his baby boy could 
learn to say his first words, Assyria would conquer 


TRAGIC CHOICE MADE BY A KING 137 


those two kingdoms that were now attacking Judah. 
He hoped that the people would believe him and no 
longer be afraid, but put their trust in Yahweh. 
But the people agreed with the king, so they laughed 
at Isaiah and probably called him a fool; and Isaiah 
had to tell them that some day they would see that 
they were the foolish ones. He said that his mes¬ 
sage from Yahweh was like the little stream of Shi- 
loah that flowed near the city. They would pay no 
attention to him now, but some day Assyria would 
flow over them like a great river and punish them 
for their unbelief. But this is the splendid way that 
Isaiah said it: 

Forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of Shiloah 
that go softly, 

And faint before Rezin and Remaliah’s son, 

Now, therefore, Yahweh bringeth up upon them the waters 
of the river, strong and many, 

Even the king of Assyria and all his glory; 

And it shall sweep onward into Judah; 

It shall reach even to the neck; 

And the stretching out of its wings shall fill the breadth 
of thy land, 

O Immanuel. 

(Isa. 8: 6-8) 

Thus did both king and people decide against 
Isaiah. They would not quietly wait to see what 
was the wise thing to do; they would not trust Yah¬ 
weh to keep them if they did right. 

Soon word came from the East that old Tiglath- 


138 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

pileser was rising np like a lion from his den and 
starting west to see whom he might devour. The 
letter of Ahaz had asked him to attack Damascus 
and Israel. He expected to do that anyway, so of 
course he came. But now he said, “ Perhaps I can 
get Judah also.’* All the people in Judah rejoiced, 
because now they could see the Israelites and the 
Syrians packing up their camps to go home and get 
ready to meet the great king. Ah, now they would 
be repaid for their impudence in daring to come 

down and attack Jerusalem! 

Did any of Isaiah’s disciples remind the people 
that this was exactly what Isaiah had said would 
happen? Did this make them remember what he 
had said about the danger that the great Assyrian 
river might flow over into Judah? Did they begin 
to think that perhaps Tiglath-pileser might attack 
Jerusalem? 

Perhaps it was this fear that made Ahaz gather 
up all the gold and silver and fine things he could 
take from the temple and ask the people to give him 
more, and get ready to go to Damascus to meet the 
Assyrian king. If Ahaz could give him many pres¬ 
ents, perhaps he would let Judah alone for a while. 
That is the way a weak, wicked man plans, just to 
save himself now from the results of his deeds. He 
knew he had done wrong and he made up his mind 
to escape the punishment if possible. The rest of 
the story will tell how he did save himself and left 
the punishment to come upon Judah later. This 
is why the choice of King Ahaz was tragic for Judah. 


TRAGIC CHOICE MADE BY A KING 139 


PROPHET MEETS KING 
A Dramatic Scene 

King and counsellors examining spring. Unseen, Isaiah en¬ 
ters, leading his son, Shear Yashub. As the king turns and dis¬ 
covers Isaiah, the boy bows, and Isaiah speaks: 

Isaiah : Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thine 
heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking fire-brands. 
Because Syria hath counselled evil against thee saying, Let us 
go up against Judah and vex it, and set up a king of our own. 
{King shows anger.) Thus saitli Yahweh God, it shall not stand, 
neither shall it come to pass. ( King shows surprise.) If ye 
will not believe surely ye shall not be established. {King calls 
counsellor to him and they confer saying, Shall we not appeal 
to Assyriaf etc.) (Isaiah watches them anxiously, then comes 
closer and speaks with great earnestness.) Ask thee a sign of 
Yahw r eh thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height 
above. 

Ahaz: {loftily) I will not ask, neither will I tempt Yahweh. 
Isaiah: {indignantly) Hear ye now, 0 house of David; is it 
a small thing to weary men, that ye will w T eary my God also? 
Yahweh himself shall give you a sign. Behold a young woman 
shall bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel, God-with-us. 
For before the child is old enough to refuse the evil and choose 
the good, these two kings that now you fear shall be conquered 
by Assyria. But, alas, this great Assyria to whom thou wilt run 
for help will seek also to destroy Judah. The Assyrians will 
come like bees and settle upon the rocks and thorns of Judah. 
(Ahaz in anger summons his counsellors to depart with him. 
As they are leaving, Isaiah continues) Take heed. If ye will 
not believe, surely ye shall not be established. 

(For a play covering the whole of Isaiah’s life see The Drama 
of Isaiah, by E. W. Whitman. The Pilgrim Press, Boston.) 


CHAPTER XIV 


ISAIAH’S WONDERFUL KING 

How proud and important King Ahaz felt to meet 
and talk with the great Assyrian! Do you not see 
him as he hows low and offers presents and then 
rises up proudly to make the emperor feel his im¬ 
portance! In the days following there would be 
great processions through the streets of Damascus 
to show the people that a magnificent emperor now 
ruled them. Ahaz would be given an important 
place in these processions. 

One account shows us that Ahaz longed to have 
more of this grandeur in Judah. He saw a beauti¬ 
ful altar in Damascus that he wanted to copy for 
the temple at Jerusalem. Why should not Jeru¬ 
salem be as fine as Damascus! Accordingly he got 
some one to make him a pattern of that altar and 
at once sent off a messenger to carry it to Urijah 
the priest. He wanted the altar made so that it 
would be ready for him to use when he came home, 
so that the people of Judah might then see the new 
splendor that he had brought to them. 

During the processions and feasts in Damascus, 
Ahaz would make sure by his presents and promises 
that Tiglath-pileser would not give Judah any 
trouble at once; then he would travel hack thinking 

140 


ISAIAH’S WONDERFUL KING 141 


all along the way how he could be more like the 
great Assyrian. 

The account of the home-coming of Ahaz, as given 
in our Bible, is very brief, but it says that the king 
used the new altar at once. Probably this means 
that he called the people together at the temple to 
tell them of the successful journey he had made, and 
the splendid reception the emperor had given him. 
Everybody would be glad and say to his neighbor, 
“Now we know that Isaiah was wrong and our king 
was right. See how tine we are and how safe with 
Assyria as our friend.” But the foes of Isaiah 
were short sighted. Probably Tiglath-pileser said 
to himself as he took Ahaz’s presents, “Aha! your 
presents show that you are rich but afraid of us. 
Your turn to be conquered will come soon.” 

But the people and the king did not think of this 
and rejoiced that they were safe for the present. 
Then the king stood before his new altar, probably 
clothed in fine new robes that he had brought back 
from Damascus, and he himself offered peace offer¬ 
ings. Usually it was the priest who stood at the 
altar, but probably Ahaz had seen Tiglath-pileser 
stand and offer thanks in this way and he wanted 
to do the same thing. 

Another thing that Ahaz did in order to be like 
the emperor was to plan to have sun-worship on the 
roof of the temple. This was, of course, disloyalty 
to Yahweh and must have shocked the priests and 
many of the people. On that account there is not 
much said about it in the Bible. But we know that 




142 FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 

there was an u upper chamber of Ahaz” on the roof 
of which were altars. (See II Kings 23:12) 

What about Isaiah during the days when king and 
people were so joyous? He must have been filled 
with sorrow. He saw the “ distress and darkness, 
the gloom of anguish’* (Isa. 8: 22) that would come 
out of their present doings. 

But Isaiah also looked far ahead to a time when, 
after the darkness, should come brightness. 

The people that walk in darkness 
Shall see a great light; 

On them that dwell in a gloomy land 
A brightness shall burst. 

Thou wilt cause abundant exultation; 

Thou wilt create exceeding joy. 1 

(Isa. 9: 2, 3) 

More important still, Isaiah dreamed of a great 
king. He thought of him first as a little child. 
How Isaiah must have loved children! Ahaz the 
king had proved himself unworthy of the throne of 
David. But the perfect child to be born will grow 
up to be a powerful king like the Assyrian monarch 
except that he will be just and righteous. Listen to 
Isaiah’s words and see what kind of name he gives 
to this child: 

For unto us a child is born, 

Unto us a son is given, 

And the government shall be upon his shoulder : 

i The translation of these Isaiah passages is from H. G. Mitchell’s 
The Prophet Isaiah, except one which is from The Polychrome Bible. 


ISAIAH’S WONDERFUL KING 


143 


And his name shall be called, 

Wondrous-counsellor, god of a warrior, 

Father of booty, prince of peace. 

Of the increase of his government 
And of peace there shall be no end, 

Upon the throne of David, 

And upon his kingdom, 

To establish it, and to uphold it 
With judgment and with righteousness 
From henceforth even forever. 

(Isa. 9: 6, 7) 

Far greater than Tiglath-pileser will this greater 
king of Judah be; he will take more booty; he will 
rule so completely that there will be peace. But 
best of all, no one will wish to revolt from his 
rule because he is such a wondrous counsellor 
to every one and he is so righteous in all his de¬ 
cisions. 

This is the ideal of a fine, strong young man. 
Isaiah was not blind to the magnificence of the 
Assyrian monarch, but the king he could admire 
must be also righteous. And he believed such a king 
would come some day. This is one of the fine things 
about Isaiah; he would not give up his idea that 
right would prevail. Though king and people had 
refused to listen to him he still held to his idea, and 
believed that some day it would triumph. 

Isaiah now had a considerable group of disciples 
(Isa. 8:16). Probably they were young men who, 
like himself, hoped for a greater king than Ahaz and 
a day of real triumph for Judah. Together this 


144 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


little group of friends now retired from public 
affairs and wrote and dreamed about the glorious 
future. How much this was worth to Judah and 
how far their hopes were fulfilled the rest of the 
story of Isaiah’s life will set forth. Always it pays 
to stick to the right even though every one is against 
you. Sometime that right will triumph. 

But what of those “two tails of smoking fire- 
brands”? Did they manage to escape their punish¬ 
ment, too, as Ahaz did! No, their day had come. 
Isaiah’s words about them were fulfilled; they did 
Judah no harm and their smoky fire was put 
out. 

“The king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and 
took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and 
slew Rezin.” (II Kings 16 : 9) 

The capital city of Israel was spared but the king 
was killed and replaced by a tool of the Assyrians, 
named Hoshea. We have an account by Tiglath- 
pileser himself on the walls of his palace, telling 
of his triumphant journey into Palestine. Another 
king tried to rub out the writing but enough is left 
to make it certain that Tiglath-pileser recorded that 
he made Rezin of Damascus flee from his city and 
that he overthrew Pekah of Israel. 

Thus did the triumph of Assyria begin. For an¬ 
other ten years Israel kept her name and sat in her 
place, but her heart was gone. She was really dead 
and ready for her funeral. Her burial was ac- 


ISAIAH’S WONDERFUL KING 


145 


complished by the successors of Tiglath-pileser. 

Israel failed because she did not keep the ideals 
of freedom with which she began, because she 
wanted to be rich rather than right. 





CHAPTER XV 


MICAH, THE FARMER 

The tragic decay of the northern kingdom, Israel, 
deeply affected all the prophets. But none of their 
words of warning saved her. On she rushed to her 
doom, and in the year 722 b. c. the end came. Tig- 
lath-pileser had died and his successor Shalmanezer 
had come over and besieged Samaria, the capital 
of Israel, for three years. (II Kings 17: 3-6) Sa¬ 
maria could hold out so long because she was built 
on a hill which the enemy could not climb without 
being seen. But finally the Israelites had to give up 
and the new Assyrian emperor, Sargon, who had 
seized the throne when Shalmanezer died, entered 
in triumph. Here is his own account,— 

“At the beginning of my reign, in my first year, . . . 
Samaria I besieged, I captured; 27,290 people from its 
midst I carried captive. 50 chariots I took there as an 
addition to my royal force ... I returned and made 
more than formerly to dwell. People from lands which my 
hands had captured I settled in the midst. My officers 
over them as governors I appointed. Tribute and taxes 
I imposed upon them after the Assyrian manner. ’ ’ 1 

Think what this means: that fathers were dragged 

i G. A. Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 369. 

140 




MICAH, THE FARMER 


147 


away from their families and marched for weeks 
and weeks across the desert to far-away Assyria 
and there forced to work like slaves. It was worse 
than death to them and to their families. It is pos¬ 
sible that some whole families were taken, but, even 
so, they became slaves and were far away from the 
land they loved. Especially hard would it be for 
them to worship Yahweh their God in this far-away 
land where everybody worshiped Marduk, Ashur, 
and other gods. 

Both the Assyrian and the Biblical accounts say 
that people from Assyria were brought over and 
settled in the land of Israel. {II Kings 17:24) 
They may have been brought like slaves or they may 
have been told that they would be given lands and 
houses free if they would go. Which do you think 
the emperor would be more likely to do ? Of course 
he was so cruel and hard-hearted that he would not 
mind taking his own subjects over to Palestine 
whether they wanted to go or not, but you must 
remember that his purpose in taking settlers there 
was to have people in the land of Israel who would 
not revolt against him. Is it not likely, therefore, 
that he would make them think that he was doing 
them a great kindness when he took them over the 
long journey to Palestine? Perhaps he even pro¬ 
claimed his offer and took those that wanted to 
go. 

And what do you suppose these Assyrians would 
do when they reached Israel? You may be sure 
they would take the best of everything. If they saw 


148 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


an Israelite living in a fine house with vineyards 
and fig-orchards around, they would tell him to 
move out at once and he would have to do it because 
it was the king of Assyria who now ruled Israel. 

The newly^arrived Assyrians had some trouble 
with lions coming up from the desert and devouring 
their children. And they said to themselves, i ‘ This 
is because we do not know the god of this land.” 
So they appealed to the emperor and he sent them 
a priest of Yahweh who came to Bethel and showed 
them how to worship Yahweh. After that they wor¬ 
shiped Yahweh along with their Assyrian gods. 
(II Kings 17:24-33) 

The carrying off of Israel to Assyria is the story 
of the “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.” Many people 
believe that they were taken to one place in Assyria, 
or at least were kept together so that some day they 
may even yet be found. But you can see from the 
accounts that they were too completely lost for that. 
There must have been many more than 27,290 of all 
Israel. Probably only the best workers were taken 
and the emperor would see that they were not left 
together to make him trouble. Perhaps some of 
those left in Israel went down into Judah where 
they would have many friends. So the ten tribes 
of Israel were “lost” and have never been found, 
because they were mixed in with many other peoples. 
This is the very last that is known of the kingdom 
that young Jeroboam founded when he revolted 
from Solomon and a sad end it was. 

One prophet who was deeply impressed by the 


MICAH, THE FARMER 


149 


fall of the kingdom of Israel was Micah, a farmer 
living in the little town of Moresketh. Perhaps it 
was his thinking about Israel’s sorrows that made 
him a prophet. He saw, like every one else, that 
Israel suffered for her sins. But as he looked art 
the city of Jerusalem, he saw there also manv com- 
mitting the sins of Israel. This so filled him with 
indignation that he came forth as a prophet, de¬ 
claring, 

1 Zion shall be plowed as a field, 

And Jerusalem shall become heaps, 

And the mountain of the house 
As the high places of a forest. 

(. Mic . 3: 12) 

Xobody would like to hear that message. It sounded 
like treason. Jerusalem fall? Why? Micah, the 
farmer, replied in language much like that of Amos, 
the shepherd: 

Lo, Yahweh goeth forth from his place; 

He descendeth and marcheth on the heights of the earth. 
Molten are the mountains beneath him, 

And the valleys gape open, 

Like wax in fire, 

Like water poured over a fall. 

For the transgression of Jacob is all this, 

And for the sins of the house of Israel. 

What is the transgression of Jacob ? 

Is it not Samaria? 

i All the text of Micah in this chapter is from G. A. Smith’s 
Minor Prophets. 



150 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


What is the sin of the house of Judah? 

Is it .not Jerusalem? 

Therefore do I turn Samaria into a ruin of the field. 

Yea, it hath come unto Judah! 

It hath smitten right up to the gate of my people, 

Up to Jerusalem. 

(. Mic . 1: 2-6, 9) 

Look at Israel, he says. Is not Jerusalem as bad 
as Samaria? If Y-ahweh allowed Israel to be car¬ 
ried away because of her sins, how can you expect 
to escape if you commit the same sins? The vil¬ 
lages of Judah and the people of Jerusalem 
may expect the Assyrian to take them captive 
also, 

Micah boldly pointed out the sins of Judah and it 
is interesting to see that he feels especially strong 
about the fact that the rich were taking the land of 
the poor. He pictures the rich as lying on their 
beds at night planning to deprive the poor of their 
homes, and as getting up at daylight to carry out 
their plans. Listen to his words: 

Woe unto them that plan mischief, 

And on their beds work out evil! 

As soon as morning breaks they put it into execution. 

For—it lies in the power of their hands! 

They covet fields and seize them, 

Houses, and lift them up, 

So they crushed a good man and his house, 

A man and his heritage. 


(Mic. 2: 1, 2) 


151 


MICAH, THE FARMER 

Had some of Micah’s farmer friends had their land 
taken from them ! Had some of Micali ’s own farm 
land been seized by some one so powerful that he 
could do nothing to get justice! He thinks that the 
poor themselves have not done anything to make 
the rich take their things. The poor have walked 
quietly along their way attending to their own busi¬ 
ness, but the rich have snatched the garments off 
their shoulders and carried away the women from 
their homes. 

But ye are the foes of my people, 

Rising against those that are peaceful; 

The mantle ye strip from them that walk quietly by, 
Averse to war! 

Women of my people ye tear from their happy homes, 
From their children ye take my glory forever. 

Rise and begone—for this is no resting place! 

Because of the uncleanness that bringeth destruction, 
Destruction incurable. 

(lie. 2: 8-10) 

So cruel did Micah feel many of the powerful people 
in Judah to be that he describes them as eating the 
flesh of the poor—as skinning them, breaking their 
bones, and chopping them up as if they were putting 
them into a kettle to boil. (. Mic . 3: 2, 3) 

No wonder that Micah was arrested and brought 
before the king as a traitor because he said Jeru¬ 
salem should be plowed as a field. But there was 
a new king on the throne of Judah. Ahaz had died 
and his young son Hezekiah was king, and he knew 







152 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Isaiah. This made all the difference in the world 
in his treatment of Micah. Probably Isaiah showed 
Hezekiah that what Micah was saying about the 
rich and strong was true. So Hezekiah and the 
people of Judah did not put Micah to death, and 
perhaps the king did something to stop the land¬ 
grabbing and the robbery. (See Jeremiah 26: 
18, 19) 

Here the story of Micah ends, but his words no 
doubt had a great influence upon Hezekiah and the 
people of Judah. Under the leadership of Ahaz 
they had become as wicked and foolish as Israel. 
The words of Micah added to the influence of Isaiah 
began to make a new, reformed Judah that 
would not fall before the Assyrian for a hundred 
years. 

Here, then, is a farmer who helps to save his 
country by declaring her sins boldly even in the face 
of possible death. It was the spirit within the man 
that turned the farmer into the prophet. Who, 
then, can be a prophet? A farmer, a shepherd, a 
man of the court ,—any one who can hear the voice 
of God about the right and will tell others, may 
become a prophet of God. 

It was the prophets who kept Judah from suffer¬ 
ing at once the punishment from Assyria which 
Ahaz had prepared for her. During the hundred 
years of life left to Judah we shall see her become 
for a time a truly great nation, because her king and 
people listened to the voice of God as proclaimed 
by the prophets. 


CHAPTER XVI 
JERUSALEM DELIVERED 

After Ahaz and the people rejected Isaiah’s mes- 
sage, he and his disciples withdrew from the king’s 
court. They did not cease their labors, however, 
but busied themselves writing the prophet’s utter¬ 
ances in a little book. Wlien Hezekiah became king, 
Isaiah once more appeared at court, and advised 
against joining with Egypt against Assyria. 

Think what a bad state of affairs Ahaz had left 
to his son Hezekiah,—a great tribute of money and 
treasure to be paid every year to the king of As¬ 
syria. And all the while Egypt kept saying, “Why 
should you pay it? Join me; I will protect you 
from Assyria.” Isaiah tried to help the young 
king. He told him to have nothing to do with Egypt 
because Egypt could never be trusted. 

One day ambassadors arrived from the little 
country of Philistia. They told Hezekiah that they 
had decided to join with Egypt, and surely Judah 
could not refuse to join also. But Isaiah was there 
to urge Hezekiah to trust in Yahweli; and the king 
listened and sent the ambassadors home with a 
refusal. (Isa. 14: 28-32) 

This early picture of Hezekiah is a beautiful one 

—a strong young man realizing the mistakes his 

153 


154 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


father had made and determined to keep Jndah free 
from more wrong-doing. Probably Isaiah became 
a kind of teacher to him, showing him how Judah 
could be a great nation holy to Yahweh. How can 
one doubt that he put before the young Hezekiah 
his picture of the ideal king! And Hezekiah, we 
may imagine, stood up straight and tall and made 
up his mind to be that ideal king. 

But great excitement swept over all the little 
Palestine states when Sennacherib, the new Assyr¬ 
ian king, began marching west to punish Philistia 
and others for refusing to pay their tribute. And, 
alas, there were other counsellors than Isaiah pour¬ 
ing their advice into the ears of the young king. 
There was a man named Shebna who, though not a 
Judean, had managed to become treasurer. There 
were throngs of princes who continually told Hez¬ 
ekiah that his only hope of saving Judah was to join 
the alliance with Egypt. Isaiah stood up against 
them like a warrior, saying, 

Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, 

And stay on horses and trust in chariots because they are 
many, 

And in horsemen because they are strong, 

But they look not to the Holy One of Israel, neither seek 
Yahweh. 

(Isa. 31:1) 

But Hezekiah yielded to his bad counsellors, and 
Isaiah, tilled with indignation and sorrow, cried 
out to them, 


JERUSALEM DELIVERED 


155 


Woe to the unruly sons! says Yahweh, 

Carrying 1 out a purpose which is not mine, 

And concluding a treaty contrary to my spirit, 

Thus adding sin to sin; 

Mho set forth on the way to Egypt without asking my 
counsel. 

(Isa. 30: 1, 2) i 

There must have been a dramatic scene in the court 
when Isaiah boldly told them that the covenant they 
had made with Egypt was a “covenant with death” 
which would lead to the overwhelming of Judah* 
(Isa. 28:14-19) 

On one occasion he also spoke words to Shebna 
that must have put his life in danger,, for he told 
Shebna that Yahweh would hurl him out of Judah 
as a man throws a ball far across a field. (Isa. 22: 
15-19) 

So disappointed did Isaiah feel in king and 
people that he called Assyria the whip or rod with 
which it was necessary for Yahweh to punish Judah. 

Woe! Assyria, the rod of mine anger, 

And the staff of mine indignation! 

Against an impious nation am I wont to send him, 

And against the people of my wrath to give him a charge, 
To take spoil and seize booty, 

And to trample them like mire in the streets. 

(Isa. 10: 5-6) 

Nearer and nearer drew the Assyrian army and 
greater grew the excitement in the little states of 
Palestine. Down the coast the common enemy 


156 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


moved, taking Sidon and other sea-coast places, 
then turning eastward toward Judah. How they 
treated the people they captured is shown by the 
account which Sennacherib has left us of what he 
did in Ekron. The king of Ekron had refused to 
join the Egyptian alliance and his own people had 
taken him from the throne and carried him to Jeru¬ 
salem for Hezekiah to keep in prison. Sennacherib 
thus tells the story: 

“The governors, princes, and people of Ekron, 
who had cast into fetters of iron Podi, their king 
. . . and had delivered him to Hezekiah, the Judean, 
who as an enemy imprisoned him ... I approached 
Ekron. The governors and princes who had com¬ 
mitted sin I killed and on stakes round the city I 
hung their bodies. I brought Podi, their king, out 
of the midst of Jerusalem, and on the throne of 
dominion over them I placed, and imposed the trib¬ 
ute of my over-lordship upon him.” 1 

No wonder there was terror at the approach of 
the Assyrian. No one liked to face the possibility 
of being hung on a pole on the city wall. There 
was no mercy to be hoped for; the Assyrian was 
cruel and boastful. Isaiah vividly pictures them 
as saying: 

By the strength of my hand have I done it, 

And by my wisdom, for I have discernment; 

And I removed the bounds of the peoples, 

And their treasures I plundered. 

i G. A. Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 373. 


JERUSALEM DELIVERED 


157 


And on the riches of the peoples 
My hand has seized as on a nest, 

As unguarded eggs are carried away, 

Have I carried off all the earth; 

There was none that fluttered the wing, 

Or opened the beak and chirped. 

(Isa. 10:13, 14) 

Can it be possible that Yahweh will allow this wicked 
power to overcome his own people? Isaiah is heart¬ 
broken at the prospect, and pleads with the people 
to repent of their sins. 

Come now, and let us reason together, says Yahweh; 

If your sins be as scarlet they may become as white as 
snow; 

Be they red as crimson, they may become as wool. 

If ye be willing and obedient, the good of the land shall 
ye eat. 

But if ye refuse and resist, by the sword be ye eaten! 

The mouth of Yahweh has spoken it! 

(Isa. 1:18-20) 

But the people reply, “See how religious we are; 
we are tilling the temple full of burnt offerings of 
rams and the fat of fed beasts. The altar is con¬ 
tinually wet with the blood of bullocks and lambs 
and he-goats. Surely Yahweh will not let any harm 
come upon us.” But Isaiah replies for Yahweh, 

What care I for the great number of your sacrifices? 
Wash you, make you clean. 

Let me see the evil of your doings no more. 


158 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Seek out justice, chastise the violent, 

Right the orphan, plead for the widow. 

(Isa. 1: 11, 16-17) 

No hope for you, 0 Judah, unless you stop robbing 
the widow and orphan! Going to the temple with 
offerings will not help you. The Assyrians are al¬ 
most at your gates; the villages of Judah are al¬ 
ready destroyed. What will you do? 

Your land is a desolation, your cities are burned with fire, 
Your tilled land—strangers devour it before your face. 
Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, 

Like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, like a besieged city. 

(Isa. 1: 7, 8) 

Put beside this the following account left by Sen¬ 
nacherib, and see how rapidly destruction was 
drawing near to Jerusalem. 

“As to Hezekiah, the Judean, who has not submitted to 
my yoke, 46 of his strongholds, fortified cities, and smaller 
cities of their environs without number, with the onset 
of battering rams and the attack of engines, mines, 
breaches, and axes (?), I besieged, I captured. 200,150 
people, small and great, male and female, horses, mules, 
asses, camels, oxen, and sheep without number I brought 
out of their midst and counted as booty. He himself I 
shut up like a caged bird in Jerusalem, his capital city; 
I erected beleaguering works against him, and turned back 
by command every one who came out of his city gate. ’ ’ 1 

Can you not see the people scrambling about in 

i G. A. Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 373. 


JERUSALEM DELIVERED 


159 


their fright to find a way to save themselves? Some 
would take their treasures and bury them, some 
would try to make secret hiding places for them¬ 
selves. Some would become reckless and cry, “Let 
us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. (Isa. 22:13) 

In the midst of all this distress king Hezekiah 
repented. He saw that he had been foolish and had 
done wrong not to follow Isaiah’s advice. So he 
made up his mind to send to Sennacherib at once 
the tribute which he had refused to pay. As he 
could not now gather enough money from the people, 
he cut off the gold from the temple pillars and sent it 
to Sennacherib at the city of Lachish. (II Kings 
18:13-16) 

Sennacherib boasts of this in his inscription and 
tells of many other things that Hezekiah sent him: 

“As to Hezekiah himself, the fear of the lustre of my 
lordship overcame him. . . . With 30 talents of gold, 800 
talents of silver, precious stones, rouge, . . . beds of ivory, 
stationary ivory thrones, elephant’s hide, ... all sorts 
of objects, a heavy tribute.” 1 

But Hezekiah had repented too late to keep the 
Assyrian back. Rabshakeh, the Assyrian general, 
appeared before the walls and demanded the sur¬ 
render of the city. Then did Hezekiah send for 
Isaiah and humbly repent and beg his help. And 
Isaiah looked into the face of the king that he had 
loved as a young man, and, seeing there the signs of 
true repentance, he spoke words of comfort. “Be 

i lb. p. 373. 


160 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


not afraid.” More than this, Isaiah declared that 
the Assyrian should not enter the city. (Isa. 37: 

1-7) 

“Therefore thus saith Yahweh concerning the king of 
Assyria, He shall not come unto this city, nor shoot an 
arrow there, neither shall he come before it with shield, 
nor cast a mount against it. For I will defend the city.” 
(Isa. 37: 33-35) 

Imagine the excitement in Jerusalem when the 
words reached them! Can you not see the people 
running about the narrow streets saying to each 
other, Isaiah is at the court again and he declares 
that Yahweh will protect Jerusalem! 

Some believed it, some scoffed at it. But all 
would soon see. Sennacherib continued to demand 
the surrender of the city, sending a letter which 
Hezekiah took to the temple and spread out before 
Yahweh. Any moment might bring the attack on 
the city. 

One morning the watchers were scanning the hori¬ 
zon to the south for any signs of the coming Assyr¬ 
ian army. What is that dark object coming nearer? 
A man running. On he comes and soon is near 
enough to shout the news: 

“The angel of Yahweh went forth, and smote in the 
camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five 
thousand.” (Isa. 37: 36) (II Kings 19: 35) 

With what awe and thankfulness the listeners would 
bow their heads! Then quickly they would let the 


JERUSALEM DELIVERED 


161 


messenger in to hear the rest of his story. The 
aim\ had disappeared, he would tell them, leaving 
in the camp only the five thousand a hundred and 
four score “dead corpses.” Those had died of 
some terrible disease, probably what we now call 
bubonic plague, which they believed Yahweh must 
ha'v e sent upon them. People in those far-away 
days thought that all sickness came as a punishment 
from some god. All Judah, therefore, now rejoiced 
over the deliverance of Judah by the “angel of 
Yahweh.” 

Here is victory for Isaiah the prophet! Had he 
not said that Yahweh would protect Jerusalem and 
that no one could destroy the holy temple? Now he 
is proved right. No more will he be a laughing-stock 
but all will kiss his robes and ask, “What may we 
do to be forgiven?” To all this Isaiah joyfully 
replied, perhaps in the same words that he had long 
addressed to their unheeding ears, 

“Y ash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your 
doings from mine eyes; cease to do evil: 

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isa. 1: 6, 17) 

Thus Isaiah turns his victory into a victory for 
the righteousness of the people of Judah. He be¬ 
gins a new era for Jerusalem. 


CHAPTER XVII 


JERUSALEM BECOMES HOLY 

Days of jubilee followed the delivery of Jerusalem 
from the Assyrian army. Again people brought 
forth their treasures and began to make plans for 
a happy life. What enemy need they fear now if 
Yahweh would help them? Ah, but Yahweh will 
be with you only if you are righteous, Isaiah kept 
reminding them. They knew this was true, and 
they joined together to try to make Jerusalem holy. 
Slaves were set free, widows received again their 
houses and lands from those who had stolen them, 
orphans were given back the money that belonged 
to them. Everybody declared that he would be fair 
and just in all his dealings. 

Hezekiah also cleansed the temple. He called to¬ 
gether priests and people who brought out many 
things that did not belong to Yahweh worship and 
destroyed them. One thing that he destroyed was 
a “brazen serpent.’’ (II Kings 18:4) Probably 
this was many centuries old, part of their ancient 
desert worship. When they lived in the desert 
where snakes were dangerous, they made a snake- 
god out of brass to pray before so that snakes would 
not bite them. There is an old story about this 

brazen serpent. One time when serpents bit many 

162 


JERUSALEM BECOMES HOLY 163 

of the children of Israel and they died, the old story 
says, 

“Yahweh said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, 
and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every¬ 
one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it upon a pole: 
and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, 
when he looked upon the serpent of brass, he lived.’’ 
(Numbers 21:8, 9) 

This is the account of an old story teller who 
wanted to explain why the serpent was in the temple. 
Perhaps the story teller did not think that Hezekiah 
ought to destroy the serpent because, he said, Moses 
had made it at the command of Yahweh. Indeed, 
many of the people were probably frightened when 
they saw Hezekiah dare to bring the serpent out of 
the temple and break it in pieces, for, they thought, 
“Now the serpents may come and bite us.” It was 
because so many of the people actually believed in 
the power of the brass serpent that Hezekiah said 
what he did when he broke it. 

“Nehushtan” cried the king, as he tore apart the 
shining metal. This Hebrew word means “brass,” 
and the people thus knew that the king did 
not believe the serpent to be a god at all but only 
; a piece of brass, a mere nothing. And Hezekiah 
“trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel.” (II Kings 
18:4, 5) 

Another thing that Hezekiah did to make people 
worship Yahweh only was to remove the “high 


164 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


places.” These high places, or hill tops, you re¬ 
member, were where the Canaanites worshiped their 
Baals or gods of the land. The people of Judah 
said that they worshiped Yahweh at the high places, 
but the truth is that it was hard to tell whom they 
were worshiping, for they did exactly the same 
things that the Canaanites did. They went to feasts 
on the hill tops and drank wine till they were drunk 
and immoral. Now Hezekiah and Isaiah said, The 
only way to stop this is to remove the altars and 
pillars from those high places so that people cannot 
worship there. And Hezekiah proclaimed to all the 
people before the altar of the temple in Jerusalem, 
saying, 

“Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem.” (77 
Kings 18: 22) 

Thus all eyes and hearts turned toward the pu¬ 
rified, holy Jerusalem and from this time on it was 
the one great place to worship the true God. 

Probably the city was now rebuilt and made beau¬ 
tiful in many ways, but of one improvement we have 
a definite account: 

“Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, 
and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water 
into the city, are they not written in the book of the 
chronicles of the kings of Judah?” (77 Kings 20:20) 

This 4 Hook of chronicles” tells us no more, but 


JERUSALEM BECOMES HOLY 165 


the rocks of Jerusalem and an old record do. Open¬ 
ing out of the one spring of Jerusalem there is a 
rock-cutting that is the beginning of Hezekiah’s 
conduit. He cut it high enough for a man to walk 
through. One reason for doing this is that the Jeru¬ 
salem spring is intermittent; ordinarily the water is 
only a foot or two deep, but several times a day it 
rises up to four or five feet. Hezekiah cut this tun¬ 
nel through the solid rock for seventeen hundred feet 
so that the water could empty into a pool inside the 
city walls. Then if enemies surrounded the city, 
the women could fill their water-jars inside the city 
wall instead of exposing themselves to the arrow’s 
that might be shot at them outside. The old city 
wall passed between the spring and the pool. A 
tunnel of this description still exists in Jerusalem. 
The promoter of this fine piece of engineering, pre¬ 
sumably Hezekiah, made a record of his work and 
put it in a more enduring place than a book. He 
wrote it on the rock inside the tunnel, and there it 
has remained all these centuries till 1880 when it 
w r as discovered and broken off, and this is v T hat it 
says: 

“The boring through (is completed). And this 
is the story of the boring through: while yet (they 
plied) the drill, each toward his fellow, and wdiile 
yet there were three cubits to be bored through, 
there was heard the voice of one calling unto an¬ 
other, for there was a crevice in the rock on the right 
hand. And on the day of the boring through the 


166 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


stone cutters struck each to meet his fellow, drill 
upon drill; and the waters flowed from the source 
to the pool for a thousand and two hundred cubits, 
and a hundred cubits was the height of the rock 
above the head of the stone-cutters. ” 1( 

Do you see from this story how they worked? 
One group of workers began cutting into the rock 
at the spring and another group began at the pool 
they had walled up ready for the water. They 
worked toward each other with some kind of hand 
drills and then, one day, they heard each other’s 
fvoices. This was because there was a crack in the 
rock through which the sound could travel. Finally 
the last rock was cut out and the water flowed 
through. It was a great piece of work to get ac¬ 
complished. Probably Aliaz and many a king be¬ 
fore Hezekiah had wished but had not dared to 
undertake it. 

Hezekiah was one of the greatest of Judah’s kings, 
probably the greatest since David, hie was an up- 
builder and purifier of the city, and under the influ¬ 
ence of Isaiah gave the poor people of Judah more 
justice than ever before. Perhaps it was in these 
happy times, as a further inspiration to Hezekiah, 
that Isaiah wrote his most beautiful picture of the 
ideal king and the ideal age. It is worth reading 
and thinking about and learning, for even today the 
world has no finer description of a leader of men. 
Here it is as it stands in Isaiah’s book: 

i Translation of Siloam Inscription in G. A. Barton’s Archeology 
and the Bible, p. 376. 


JERUSALEM BECOMES HOLY 167 


THE IDEAL AGE 

There will come forth a shoot from the stock of Jesse, 
And a scion from his roots will bear fruit. 

The spirit of Yahweh will rest on him, 

A spirit of wisdom and discernment, 

A spirit of counsel and might, 

A spirit of knowledge and fear of Yahweh. 

He will not judge according to all that his eyes have seen, 
Nor give decision according to that which his ears have 
heard, 

But with righteousness will he judge the helpless, 

And with equity will he give decision for the destitute in 
the land; 

And with the breath of his lips will he slay the ungodly; 
And righteousness will be the zone about his loins, 

And faithfulness the girdle about his reins. 

And the wolf will lodge with the lamb, 

And the leopard will lie down with the kid; 

And the calf and the young lion will graze together, 

And a little child shall lead them. 

The cow and the bear will graze, 

Together will their young ones lie down, 

And the lion will eat straw like the ox; 

And the suckling child will play about the hole of the asp, 
And the weaned child shall stretch forth his hand to the 
basilisk’s den. 

And they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy moun¬ 
tain, 

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, 
as the waters cover the sea. 


(Isa. 11: 1-9) 


168 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Here is pictured a king who is not thinking first 
of how he can build up his own power, but is pray¬ 
ing for the right spirit in everything he does, for 
wisdom and knowledge. When he has to make a 
decision he does not look at the outside of things 
only but examines carefully into them to be sure 
what is right, that he may decide with “equity.” 
When he has discovered wrong doers he will slay 
them “with the breath of his lips,” that is, he will 
denounce them publicly and destroy their wicked 
schemes, not kill them. 

As a result of such leadership a New Age will 
dawn when there will be no more cruel destruction. 
The wolf will no longer eat the lamb, nor the leopard 
the kid, nor the lion the calf. These animals will 
learn to eat “straw,” that is, grain, instead of meat. 
The serpents will no longer hurt little children; 
indeed, a little child shall be able to lead all the ani¬ 
mals. Whether Isaiah really means that these wild 
animals will actually change their habits or whether 
this is his poetic way of saying that wolf-like men 
will stop preying on their brothers, perhaps we can¬ 
not be sure, but it is certain that he expected that 
all men’s cruelty would cease and kindness and good¬ 
will rule everywhere. 

There is another piece of poetry in the book of 
Isaiah akin to this that may not have been written 
by him but was certainly inspired by Isaiah’s beauti¬ 
ful words. He saw the terrible cruelty of war that 
had killed thousands upon thousands of the best 
people of the nations. If, then, the perfect age is 


JERUSALEM BECOMES HOLY 169 

to come, it is certain that wars must cease. Of the 
people of that day the writer says, 

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, 

And their spears into pruning-hooks; 

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 

Neither shall they learn war any more. 

(Isa. 2: 4) 

Isaiah, then, helped make the Jerusalem of his 
own day holy, but, more important still, he pointed 
ahead to a more perfect time. He gave the world 
an ideal towards which lovers of peace have ever 
since been stretching out their hands. When can 
his ideal be realized? 


CHAPTER XVIII 


DARK DAYS FOR JUDAH 

When Hezekiah died, his twelve-year-old son, 
Manasseh, became king; but he was not at all like 
his father. He seems to have begun at once to undo 
all the good things that Hezekiah* had done. One 
cannot help asking, Why! Had this twelve-year- 
old boy been sorry to see Jerusalem made holy? No, 
the probability is that some older person really had 
the power during the years when the boy king began 
to reign. Perhaps the person is made known to us 
in the words: “and his mother’s name was Hephzi¬ 
bah.” (II Kings 21:1) Who was Hephzibah? 
Was she perhaps once a girl in the house of a priest 
of one of the high places in Judah? It would have 
been natural for Hezekiah to have married such a 
girl in his early years before he thought the high 
places were wrong. We really know nothing about 
Hephzibah but we do know that when Manasseh 
became king, through the influence of some one, he 
turned everything back. 

“He built again the high places which Hezekiah his 
father had destroyed: and he reared up altars for Baal 
and made an Asherah as did Ahab, king of Israel, and 
worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them.” 
(II Kings 21: 3) 

170 




DARK DAYS FOR JUDAH 171 

Why did King Manasseh, and no doubt many 
others, want these high places rebuilt! First, be¬ 
cause they were afraid of the Baals or lords of the 
land. For so many centuries people had believed 
that these Baalim made the grain and grapes grow 
in the fields that they could not give up the idea that 
these local gods would be offended and not give the 
grain if they were not worshiped. Second, because 
the people so much enjoyed the feast days at the 
high places. With music and wine the people 
danced and sang and told stories at the high-place 
feasts. Why should they lose their good times! 
Third, because it was too far and too much trouble 
to journey from the more distant places to Jeru¬ 
salem to make their offerings to Yahweh and attend 
his feasts. One can see that there were many rea¬ 
sons why the people would not like to have their 
home places of worship forbidden. No doubt many 
of the people and priests went up to Jerusalem as 
soon as they heard that Hezekiah was dead, to ask 
the new king to let them have their high places again. 
Probably they offered him money, and Hephzibah 
and others may have urged him to take it. 

In Jerusalem, too, Hezekiah’s work was undone by 
building altars to other gods in the temple. Manas¬ 
seh “built altars for all the host of heaven in the two 
courts of the house of Yahweh.” (II Kings 21: 4, 5) 
That means that the sun, moon, and stars were wor¬ 
shiped in Yahweh’s temple! The moon worship 
was a part of the people’s life long before in the 
desert, but the sun worship had been adopted from 


172 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Assyria. Ahaz had introduced it. The Egyptians, 
too, worshiped the sun. Probably many of the rich 
people in Judah felt that they were quite behind the 
times if they did not worship the sun as all the great 
and powerful nations did, especially Egypt, so close 
to Judah. The Egyptians wrote many hymns to 
the sun. One of them begins thus: 

Hail to thee, beautiful god of every day! 

Rising in the morning without ceasing, 

(Not) wearied in labor. 1 

No wonder people were fascinated by the great ball 
of fire, rolling daily through the sky. How could 
people in those days help thinking it was a god who 
gave light and warmth? At least it was easy to 
believe that your powerful neighbors were right in 
thinking so. Moreover Assyria expected her sub¬ 
jects to worship her gods. 

A horrible practice that was introduced again by 
Manasseh was human sacrifice, especially the sacri¬ 
fice of children. Manasseh sacrificed his own son 
as Ahaz had also done. (II Kings 16:3, 21:6) 
This is what is meant by the words, “He made his 
own son to pass through the fire.” This was a com¬ 
mon practice among the Canaanites, especially in 
the worship of Moloch. One of the high places of the 
Canaanites at Gezer has been found to contain the 
skeletons of hundreds of little children. 2 Probably 

1 G. A. Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 402. 

2 G. A. Barton’s Archeology and the Bible, p. 172, also article 
Moloch in Jeicish Encyclopedia. 


DARK DAYS FOR JUDAH 


173 


it was Manasseh’s first-born child that was sacri¬ 
ficed, for it was the ancient idea that the first son 
belonged to a god. 

But one of the glories of the people of Israel is 
that they tried to stop this inhuman custom long be¬ 
fore other nations did. One of their oldest story¬ 
books contains the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. 
The important thing about this story is that Isaac 
was not sacrificed, and that Yahweh did not wish 
him to be. To be sure, God wanted father and son 
to be willing; and so they took a journey to a sacred 
rock and made all things ready for the sacrifice; but 
suddenly the hand of Israel’s God stopped the knife 
as it was about to strike off the head of Isaac. * {Gen. 
22:1-14) That old story saved the life of many a 
child. An old law also provided that a lamb might 
be sacrificed in place of the first-born. {Ex. 34: 20) 
Perhaps it was when Manasseh had brought back 
human sacrifice that the following splendid words 
were added to the Book of Micah by some prophet: 

Wherewith shall I come before Yahweh? 

Shall I give my first-born son for my transgression, 
And the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 

Yea, what doth Yahweh seek from thee, 

But to do justice and love kindness 
And to walk humbly with thy God? 

{Micah 6: 6-8) 

The work of the prophets was not stopped in these 
terrible times. No true prophet ever has his mouth 
stopped by kings. Here is one prophet who dared 


174 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


to speak out against the sacrifice of the first-born 
son and say that Yaliweh desired justice and kind¬ 
ness for his sacrifices, not the flowing of blood. 

The book of Kings tells us about an unnamed 
prophet who was brave enough to stand up and 
speak plainly on another point thus: 

“Thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel, Behold, I bring 
such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that whosoever hear- 
eth of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch 
over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of 
the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man 
wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.” 
(II Kings 21: 12, 13) 

What a homely, picturesque figure this old prophet 
uses! So long as a dish has something good to eat 
in it, people keep it right side up, but when the food 
is spoiled, they throw it out, wash the dish, wipe it, 
and turn it upside down. Such an unclean dish had 
Jerusalem become. 

Where was Isaiah during these days of return to 
wickedness? Alas, none of the books tell us, but 
there is an old Hebrew legend that says he was put 
to death by Manasseh. (Heb. 11: 37) Certainly it 
is impossible to think that Isaiah would remain quiet 
when Judah was becoming so untrue to Yahweh and 
certainly Manasseh would not long let him speak. 
So many people did the king put to death that the 
historian says of him, ‘ 4 Manasseh shed innocent 
blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from 
one end to another,” (II Kings 21:16) 


DARK DAYS FOR JUDAH 


175 


Nevertheless, the prophets found a way to make 
their work live,—they wrote a book. This was a 
new way to speak to people, for up to this time 
Judah was not a book-reading nation. Some of the 
prophets had written out parts of their messages 
and some people had read them, but now the dis¬ 
ciples of Isaiah wrote a book for all Judah to study 
and live by. They used in their book a little col¬ 
lection of laws written sometime before and known 
to the priests. This little Book of the Covenant 
(Exodus 20-23) contained the den commandments, 
which perhaps most of the people knew. To these 
were now added laws of these unknown prophetic 
writers demanding the return to the reforms of 
Hezekiah. Pillars and asherah were to be thrown 
out of the temple ( Deut . 7:5) and all the people of 
Judah were to come to the purified Jerusalem to 
worship. This was the most important point in the 
new book because it meant that the high places 
where there was so much wickedness would again 
be destroyed. This is the way the new book spoke 
of the high places: 

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the 
nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon 
the high mountains, and upon the hills and under every 
green tree: and ye shall break down their altars, and dash 
in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherah with fire; 
and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; 
and ye shall destroy their name out of that place. Ye 
shall not do so unto Yahweh your God. But unto the 
place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all 


176 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habita¬ 
tion shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come. ( Deut . 
12: 2-5) 

Ever since the days of David, Jerusalem had been 
the chief high place where Yaliweh had chosen “to 
put his name.” Now that everybody knew of the 
deliverance of the city from Sennacherib and its 
purification by Hezekiah and Isaiah, the prophets 
were sure Jerusalem must be the only place to wor¬ 
ship Yahweli. They felt that they could not die 
without leaving this teaching in a book for the young 
people of a happier time to read. But what could 
they do with the book! If any of the friends of 
Manasseh found it, they certainly would destroy it 
as well as the people who wrote it. There must be 
found a way to hide it and save it. How! 

We can imagine the way that they decided upon, 
for we have the story of its finding. We know that 
the book was found some years later in the temple. 
Did these disciples of Isaiah meet in the temple, 
then, perhaps in the night, and place there the sacred 
law that it might be found sometime and lead the 
people back to the right way! Perhaps they did not 
hide the book until many of their number had been 
killed by Manasseh and they were sure they would 
not live to hand it on to others. Or the few that 
were left knew that their only hope of saving the 
book was to have it out of their hands and in the 
temple. 

During these dark days of persecution a little 
group kept the torch of truth burning. As we are 


DARK DAYS FOR JUDAH 


177 


tracing the story of the Hebrew nation we see them 
climbing step by step upward, but sometimes they 
seem to slip back and we wonder if all is lost. Such 
a slip-back was the reign of Manasseh and it might 
have ended every hope that Judah would ever be a 
truly great nation. But Isaiah’s “remnant,” the 
little group of disciples, saved her, though probably 
few of them lived to see the light dawn again. Not 
only Judah but the world is thankful to that little 
group of men who gave up their lives but found the 
way to hand on the truth in a book. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS 

“Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to 
reign; and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. . . . And 
he did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, as did 
Manasseh his father.” (II Kings 21: 19, 20) 

The black darkness continued for two years after 
Manasseh’s death because he had taught his son 
Amon to be like himself. But when, after Amon’s 
death, his eight-year-old son Josiah became king, 
the gray of the dawn began to appear, for it was 
no longer certain death for a prophet to speak. 
Josiah’s mother’s name was Jedidah. Perhaps she 
had hated the cruelty and oppression of her hus¬ 
band’s reign and was able to teach the little boy 
king to desire better things for Judah. At any rate 
we know that again the voice of a prophet was heard 
in the land. It was a voice of warning: 

Blow ye the trumpet in the land, 

Cry with a loud voice, 

Assemble yourselves and let us go 
Into fortified cities. 

Lift the standard toward Zion, 

Flee, stay not. 

For evil comes from the north, 

And a great destruction. 

178 


A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS 


179 


A lion is gone up from his thicket, 

And a destroyer of nations, 

He starts forth, comes from his place, 

The world to lay waste. 

For this, gird you with sackcloth, 

Wail and howl, 

For it will not turn hack from us, 

The fierce anger of Yahweh. 

(t Jeremiah 4: 5-8) 

Passers by in the streets of Jerusalem or in a village 
market place who drew near to look at the speaker 
found a young man, almost a boy. Who was this 
young man and what meant his warning cry? 

To find the answer to these questions we must 
travel in imagination to the little village of Ana- 
thoth, an hour’s journey northeast of Jerusalem. 
There dwelt “Hilkiah, of the priests that were in 
Anathoth,” with his wife and at least one son, Jere¬ 
miah, greatly beloved. Who were these priests of 
Anathoth? They may possibly have been descend¬ 
ants of Abiathar, the high priest whom Solomon 
drove out of Jerusalem, (7 Kings 2: 26, 27) or they 
may have been priests driven out of the temple by 
Manasseh because of their sympathy with Isaiah 
and his teachings. This seems more likely because 
we later find a man named Hilkiah as high priest 
in Jerusalem who is interested in a reformed Judah. 
This would be strange for any one who had been 
willing to have all the idolatry in the temple that 
Manasseh wanted. 


180 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


If, then, Hilkiah had been forcibly banished from 
Jerusalem he would feel keenly the injustice of it. 
Jeremiah, his son, born in these dark times, would 
hear from his earliest years about the wickedness of 
Jerusalem and would often hear the story of Isaiah 
and his disciples. Many a day as Jeremiah played 
about in the great living-room of the family where 
his mother was cooking with her cauldrons he no 
doubt heard his father talking with his friends about 
how the “prophets prophesy falsely and the priests 
bear rule by their means” and how the people did 
not seem to dislike the false prophets and priests to 
whom Manasseh had given power. Indeed, all Jeru¬ 
salem seemed as full of wicked people as a cage is 
full of birds. “They watch as fowlers lie in wait; 
they set a trap, they catch men!” 

As Jeremiah grew older he not only listened but 
asked questions, ( Jer . 5: 26-31). Why did Yahweh 
allow such wickedness to continue? Surely he will 
be avenged on such a nation as this! Will he not 
again send a prophet? One day when Jeremiah 
happened to be left alone in the room with his 
mother’s boiling cauldron, as he sat brooding over 
the wickedness of Judah, he seemed to hear the 
voice of Yahweh to which he could not but make 
answer: 

Voice of Yahweh: Jeremiah! Before I formed thee I knew 
thee; before thou earnest forth from thy mother I sanctified thee: 
I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. 

Jeremiah: Ah, Yahweh God! behold I cannot speak: for I am 
a child. 

Voice of Yahweh: Say not, I am a child: for to whomsoever 


A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS 181 

I shall send thee thou shalt go and whatsoever I shall command 
thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid. 

Jeremiah : Put forth thy hand and touch my mouth. 

Voice of Yahweh : Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. 
Jeremiah, what seest thou? 

Jeremiah : I see a seething cauldron; and the face thereof is 
from the north. 

Voice of \ ahweh : Out of the north evil shall break forth upon 
all the inhabitants of the land. For, lo, I will call all the fam¬ 
ilies of the kingdoms of the north, saitli Yahweh ; and they shall 
come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entering 
of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof 
round about, and against all the cities of Judah. And I will 
utter my judgments against them, touching all their wickedness; 
in that they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto 
other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands. 

Now, therefore, gird up thy loins, and arise and speak unto 
them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at them, lest I 
dismay thee before them. (Jer. 1: 4-9, 13-17) 

With what throbbings of heart Jeremiah must 
have heard these words which were to change his 
whole life! It was a voice sounding from the 
depths of his own heart, answering the questions of 
which he had long been thinking. He himself was 
to be the much needed prophet and to proclaim com¬ 
ing punishment. 

What he told his father and mother we do not 
know, or whether they approved of his sudden de¬ 
cision, but soon he was out in the public highways 
crying out to the people to flee into the fortified 
cities, for punishment was coming. His boyish voice 
must have rung out sharply in the turmoil of the 
market-place. Shepherds and traders and boys at 


182 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


their play stopped to hear what this young fellow 
was saying. Some laughed at him, some listened 
carefully. It must have been hard for Jeremiah to 
do this work, for everything that we know about him 
later shows that he was a gentle, lovable boy, very 
sensitive to what others thought of him, yet brave 
as a lion to go forth to do his duty. 

This, then, is the voice crying in the darkness, the 
voice of the young man, Jeremiah; but what of his 
message of destruction? It was undoubtedly to the 
Scythians that he looked to punish Judah’s wicked¬ 
ness. These barbarians had been pouring into the 
lands far north of Judah for several years, but 
recently they were moving down the coast toward 
Egypt. Everywhere they went they burned, de¬ 
stroyed, killed. Would they come into Judah? 
Jeremiah said yes, not because he knew any more 
than any one else about the movements ofwthe Scyth¬ 
ians but because he thought Judah too wicked to 
escape punishment. 

Let us imagine ourselves standing in one of the 
little market squares in Jerusalem listening to Jere¬ 
miah. See how he explains first that he speaks be¬ 
cause Yahweh has sent him: 

The word of Yahweh came to me saying, Go, and cry 
in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith Yahweh, I 
remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of 
thine espousals; how thou wentest after me in the wilder¬ 
ness, in a land that was not sown. I brought you into a 
plentiful land, to eat tha fruit thereof and the goodness 
thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and 


A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS 183 

made mine heritage an abomination. . . . Wherefore I 
will yet plead with you, saith Yahweh. ( Jer . 2:1-9) 

You can see from his words that Jeremiah’s 
parents had told him stories of the early days of the 
Hebrew people, when they lived in the desert with 
Yahweh’s loving care around them. God had led 

them to the rich land of Canaan and there thev had 

•/ 

ungratefully forsaken him. They, therefore, de¬ 
serve destruction; and are not the cruel Scythians 
on the way! 

Hear, 0 earth: behold I will bring evil upon this people, 
even the fruit of their thoughts. 

Behold a people cometh from the north country; and a 
great nation shall be stirred up from the uttermost parts 
of the earth. They lay hold on bow and spear; they are 
crueL, and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the 
sea, and they ride upon horses; every one set in array, as 
a man to the battle, against thee, 0 daughter of Zion. 
(Jer. 6: 19, 22, 23) 

Now a strange thing happened. The Scythians 
came while Jeremiah was proclaiming that they 
would. But they did not punish Judah. This is 
the account told by an old historian, Herodotus: 

“They (the Scythians) marched forward with the de¬ 
sign of invading Egypt. When they had reached Pales¬ 
tine, however, Psammatichus, the Egyptian king, met them 
with gifts and prayers, and prevailed on them to advance 
no further. On their return, passing through Circalon, 
a city of Syria, the greater part of them went their way 


184 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


without doing any damage; but some of them who lagged 
behind pillaged the temple of Celestian Venus.” ( Hero¬ 
dotus 1: 105) 

Does this mean that Jeremiah’s prophecy was 
wrong? Yes and no, both! He was wrong about 
the Scythians punishing Judah for their sins but he 
was right that Judah needed punishment and would 
get it sometime. Jeremiah was rightabout the all- 
important thing—that Judah should repent. So he 
was still a prophet though he made a mistake-about 
the coming of the Scythians. Men become prophets 
when they see right into the hearts of people and 
try to help them morally and spiritually. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE FINDING OF THE LAW-BOOK 

The young man, Jeremiah, was troubled that the 
Scythians had not punished Judah as he expected. 
What could be Yahweh’s plan, he asked himself as 
he went about and found people would listen to him 
no longer. One day he went oft into the fields alone 
to think and pray. As he walked along he kept 
saying to himself, Can it be that Yahweh does not 
watch over his word! It was the early spring time 
and flowers were beginning to show some bright 
color around the gray Judean rocks. But no tree 
(except the almond) as yet gave any sign of life. 
Suddenly Jeremiah found himself standing close to 
an almond tree that had put forth its delicate pink 
and white blossoms when all other trees were yet 
bare. As he looked at its beauty the name of the 
tree went through his mind— S'hakedh, as it is in 
Hebrew. But that is almost the same as the Hebrew 
word Shokedh, which means to keep watch over. 
Then Jeremiah was filled with joy and he seemed to 
hear Yahweh speaking to him. 

Voice of Yahweh: Jeremiah, what seest thou! 

Jeremiah: I see a rod of an almond tree (Shakedh). 

Voice of Yahweh: Thou hast well seen; for I watch over 
(Shokedh) my word to perform it. (Jer. 1:11, 12.) 

185 



186 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Thus did a message of comfort and encourage¬ 
ment come to Jeremiah from the flowering almond 
tree. From that time on he felt sure that he had 
not been wrong in his first preaching and that Yah- 
weh would watch over his word to perform it, by 
some other people if not by the Scythians or in a 
new way altogether. Judah must be punished if 
she would not repent. 

Perhaps it was not far from this time that new 
hope came to all in Judah who loved righteousness, 
through Josiah, the boy king. He seemed to want 
to do right. He made up his mind to purify and 
repair the temple; he appears to have appointed 
Hilkiah, the high-priest, to do this work. This was, 
perhaps, Jeremiah’s father, who had been called 
from Anathoth and restored to the high-priesthood. 
Here is the order of the king, given to Shaphan, the 
scribe: 

Go up to Hilkiah, the high-priest, that he may sum the 
money which is brought into the house of Yahweh, which 
the keepers of the door have gathered of the people: and 
let them deliver it into the hand of the workmen that have 
oversight of the house of Yahweh: and let them give it 
unto the workmen which are in the house of Yahweh, to 
repair the breaches of the house; unto the carpenters, and 
to the builders, and to the masons; and for buying timber 
and hewn stone to repair the house. (II Kings 22:4-6) 

This sounds almost like the plans for building and 
repairing such as one would make today. Hilkiah 
was the chief manager and he gave out to each 
worker the part that he was to do. Carpenters and 


THE FINDING OF THE LAW-BOOK 187 


masons and stone-cutters were to do their share of 
work and get their share of pay out of the temple 
money. But listen to this strange statement about 
their pay: 

There was no reckoning made with them of the money 
delivered into their hand; for they dealt faithfully. (77 
Kings 22: 7) 

These workmen could be trusted not to take more 
money than belonged to them for their work. Was 
it because they were workmen on the holy temple 
that they had a special sense of honor about their 
work? Perhaps, but at any rate it stands as a tine 
example to us all in our work. To give good service 
for the money we get and to be trustworthy should 
be the ideal of every one. 

One reason why we should like to know certainly 
whether Hilkiah the high-priest was Jeremiah’s 
father or not is that if he was, he may have known 
about the hidden law-book. He could not help hunt¬ 
ing for it if he knew that some disciples of Isaiah 
had written a book and had hidden it in the temple. 
The Bible does tell us that it was Hilkiah who found 
the law-book, for it says, 

And Hilkiah the high-priest said unto Shaphan the 
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of 
Yahweh. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he 
read it. (77 Kings 22: 8) 

Hilkiah does not seem to have been surprised at 
finding the book or at what it said. 'So he probably 


188 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


knew all about it and had long been hoping and pray¬ 
ing for the day to come when he could bring it forth. 
Shaphan was so astonished at the book that he hur¬ 
ried with it to the king. 

Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the 
priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it 
before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had 
heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his 
clothes. (II Kings 22: 10, 11) 

So terrible did the words of the book seem to the 
king that he felt that he must have the word of some 
prophet about it. Perhaps Jeremiah was too young 
a man for him to think of, or perhaps Hilkiah did 
not want to bring his own son. At any rate the king 
spoke to Hilkiah and some others, saying, 

Go ye, inquire of Yahweh for me, and for the people, 
and for all Judah, concerning the words of the book that 
is found: for great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled 
against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto 
the w T ords of this book. (II Kings 22: 13) 

It was a prophetess that they brought to the king 
—Huldah, the wife of Shallum. She lived in the 
“second quarter’’ of Jerusalem and she seemed to 
know all about the book. Perhaps she had known 
some of the disciples of Isaiah who wrote it. She 
sent strong words back to the king to tell him to 
obey this book, 

Tell ye the men that sent you unto me, Thus saith 
Yahweh, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and 


THE FINDING OF THE LAW-BOOK 189 


upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the 
book which the king of Judah hath read: because they 
have forsaken me and burned incense unto other gods. 
(77 Kings 22: 15-17) 

She promised the king, however, that he should 
not see great evil come to Judah because his “heart 
was tender.” But he rent his clothes and wept. 

Then the king called a great meeting of all the 
people in the temple to read them the book. We 
know today that this book was the greater part of 
what we call the book of Deuteronomy. It was the 
first big law-book that all the people knew about. 
As we turn to the book today we can see why the 
king was so troubled by it. To worship at high 
places was forbidden, and this they had been doing 
all through Manasseh’s reign. The central sanc¬ 
tuary, evidently Jerusalem, was the place to offer 
sacrifice to Yahweh, said the book, and they had 
been even worshiping the Baal there! So king and 
people read and took a vow together. 

The king stood by the pillar, and made a covenant be¬ 
fore Yahweh ... to confirm the words of this covenant 
that were written in this book: and all the people stood to 
the covenant. (77 Kings 23:3) 

Then did king and people again purify the temple 
as Hezekiah had done. They brought out all the 
idolatrous things and destroyed them in the Kidron 
. valley. Moreover, all the high places were ordered 
to be defiled and their priests removed. 

Among those who must have rejoiced in this puri- 


190 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


fication was Jeremiah. At least his own book, writ¬ 
ten much later, has an account of his going to the 
village Anathoth to preach against the high place 
there. It made the “men of Anathoth” angry for 
they wanted to keep their high place and they plotted 
to kill Jeremiah, saying, 

Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us 
cut him off from the land of the living that his name 
be no more remembered. (Jer. 11:19) 

Jeremiah had no idea that his townsmen could be 
so cruel; he fell into their trap and “was like a 
gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” But he found 
out their schemes just in time to save himself. He 
said, 

Yahweh gave me knowledge of it, and I knew it: then 
thou shewedst me their doings. But I was like a gentle 
lamb led to the slaughter. (Jer. 11: 18, 19) 

Jeremiah was probably one of the young men 
whom Josiah appointed to help him see that Judah 
kept the new law. This chapter of Judah’s history 
is one of the tine ones to read, for her life was 
shaped by vigorous young men. Josiah, the young 
king, was supported by the young prophet Jeremiah 
and a group of young men several of whose names 
we know. It was a young men’s age, and may we 
not call it one of Judah’s periods of greatness? 

A great nation is one with great ideals to which 
most of her people are loyal. Measured by this rule 
perhaps we can say that Judah had now become a 


THE FINDING OF THE LAW-BOOK 191 


great nation. Certainly she was now taking deep 
into her life ideals that she would never give up even 
when no longer a nation living under a government 
of her own. 


CHAPTER XXI 


JEREMIAH’S CHALLENGE TO JUDAH 

Josiah, the splendid yonng king who purified 
Judah, met his death suddenly in battle, an event 
that brought grief to all the people and especially 
to Jeremiah the prophet. This is the way it came 
about that Judah lost her good king. Down in 
Egypt there was a new king named Pharaoh Necho. 
He looked up to the land of Palestine and wished 
he could rule there, or at least that he could collect 
money from there instead of letting the people send 
their money to Assyria. So he got his soldiers to¬ 
gether and marched right up the coast to take the 
northern land first. Now Josiah did not think it 
right to allow this Egyptian king to take the land 
and money, so he marched north to stop him. It 
was at Megiddo, in the great plain of Esdraelon, that 
the two kings met. And Pharaoh Necho “slew him 
at Megiddo when he had seen him.” This sounds 
as though some one said, See, there is the king of 
Judah, and Pharaoh said to his archers, Shoot him 
with your arrows. 

They brought the dead king in his chariot from 
the battlefield down to Jerusalem, and great was the 
sorrow of the people as they “buried him in his own 
sepulchre.” Jeremiah later paid high tribute to 
him, saying, 


192 


JEREMIAH’S CHALLENGE 


193 


Did he not eat and drink and all justly and rightly ? 
... He judged the cause of the poor and needy. ... Is 
not this to know me? saith Yahweh. {Jer. 22:15, 16) 

Jehoiahaz became king in place of Josiah, but the 
Egyptian king did not let him reign long; he carried 
him off to Egypt in chains as a slave. People were 
still mourning for Josiah and Jeremiah said, 

Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: 

But weep sore for him that goeth away; 

For he shall return no more, nor see his native land. 

{Jer. 22:10) 

Soon after Josiah’s death the priests of the high 
places refused to obey the Book of the Law which 
they had found in the temple and had all vowed to 
keep. This made Jeremiah grieve as the following 
words show, 

Why is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a 
perpetual backsliding? They hold fast deceit, they re¬ 
fuse to return. I hearkened and heard but they spoke 
not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, say¬ 
ing, What have I done? Every one turneth to his course, 
as a horse that rusheth headlong in the battle. Yea, the 
stork in heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the 
turtle and the swallow and the crane observe the time of 
their coming; but my people know not the ordinance of 
Yahweh. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of 
Yahweh is with us. {Jer. 8:5-8) 

The people did not really care about the law deep 
down in their hearts; they had been keeping it as a 


194 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


set of rules. The stork goes the right way because 
she knows the right way. The swallow flies back 
north in the spring because something within tells 
her it is time to go. That is what Jeremiah wants 
of the people of Judah, to do right because their 
hearts say it is right. Then they would go on doing 
right even if their king were killed and there were 
no one to make them keep the law. But instead they 
backslid at once. 

All this made Jeremiah deeply discouraged, be¬ 
cause evil seemed to be ruling. He cried out in his 
agony, 

Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper ? Where¬ 
fore are all they at ease that deal very treacherously? 
Thou hast planted them, yea they have taken root; they 
grow, yea, they bring forth fruit. (Jer. 12:1, 2) 

So terrible does the triumph of wickedness seem 
to Jeremiah that he will not go about with people 
having a good time but sits and thinks and prays 
alone. He cries out to Yahweh, 

I sat not in the assembly of them that make merry, nor 
rejoiced: I sat alone because of thy hand; for thou 
hast filled me with indignation. Why is my pain per¬ 
petuated, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be 
healed ? Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a deceitful brook, 
as waters that fail? (Jer. 15: 17, 18) 

Some of these words sound almost like complain¬ 
ing. Was it right for Jeremiah to speak such words 
to his God? Yes, for he spoke them honestly and 


JEREMIAH’S CHALLENGE 195 

felt that they brought an answer from God asking 
him to purify himself. 

Voice of God : If thou take forth the precious from the vile, 
thou shalt be as my mouth. . . . And I will make thee unto this 
people a fenced brazen wall; and they shall fight against thee, 
but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee to 
save thee and to deliver thee, saith Yahweh. And I will deliver 
thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out 
of the hand of the terrible.” (Jer. 15:19-21) 

These words seem to point to terrible days coming 
in which Jeremiah will be expected to do almost su¬ 
perhuman work. Will he be willing to get himself 
ready? Will he become the mouth of God to the 
people ? That day long ago when he sat looking at 
his mother’s boiling cauldron and heard the voice 
of Yahweh calling him to become a prophet must 
have come back to him now with new meaning. 

Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth: see, I have 
this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, 
to pluck up and to break down and to destroy and to 
overthrow; to build and to plant. (Jer. 1: 9, 10) 

What does all this mean that Jeremiah is actually 
to do next? Something so terrible and unbelievable 
for a man who loves his country that Jeremiah must 
have groaned with agony when first he understood 
what he must do. Probably he told no one, but set 
himself to get ready for the terrible work. He 
would not make any one else suffer; he would do the 
work alone. Perhaps it was at this time that the 


196 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


voice of God came to him, saying, “Thou shalt not 
take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or 
daughters in this place/’ ( Jer . 16:2) 

Perhaps a beautiful love story lies behind these 
few words. In those days young men generally 
married early some one well known by their families. 
It may be that the young woman whom Jeremiah 
would have married had been waiting till his work 
for Yahweh would allow him to stay at home and 
care for his family. And now he saw that this could 
never be. His new and terrible work would take all 
the rest of his life. 

What was this terrible work! To announce to 
Judah that her holy city should be destroyed and 
her people carried away into captivity! At last the 
enemy from the north was coming and this time he 
would not stop outside the city. The temple could 
not save them as it had in Isaiah’s day. 

When and how would Jeremiah give this message? 
He waited for a time when his words would be heard 
by all. It was on a great feast day at the temple; 
probably it was a special feast of rejoicing. It may 
have been in the year 606 b. c., when Nineveh, the 
capital of Assyria, fell before the Babylonians. 
Think how glad the Judeans would be to feel that 
they need never again fear this ancient enemy, As¬ 
syria. Or, this may have been a special gathering 
at the temple in the next year when the new power 
that had overthrown Assyria marched over to Pales¬ 
tine and defeated the Egyptian king, making the 
Judeans feel that now all their old enemies were 


JEREMIAH’S CHALLENGE 


197 


robbed of their power. But Jeremiah fixed his eyes 
upon that new power, Babylonia, and saw that it 
would be even more dangerous than the old power 
to such a wicked and foolish nation as Judah. He 
saw that unless they repented, Jerusalem would be¬ 
come like Shiloh, an old sanctuary of Israel, now a 
complete desolation. The following brief drama 
shows Jeremiah giving his terrible message: 

JEREMIAH’S TEMPLE MESSAGE 

Scene: Court of the temple; the people bringing offerings 
to the high priest. Music of cymbals. Jeremiah stands watch¬ 
ing, but suddenly steps to center. 

Jeremiah: 0 children of Judah, Thus saith Yahweh: If ye 
will not hearken unto me, to walk in my law, which I have set 
before you, to hearken to the words of my servants, the prophets, 
whom I send unto you, even rising up early and sending them, 
but ye have not hearkened; then will I make this house like 
Shiloh, and make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth. 
People: (after listening a moment in dumb amazement, shout —) 
The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh! 

Jeremiah : Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of 
Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh,—the temple of Yahweh are these. 
If ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye 
thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor; 
if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow . . . 
then will I cause you to dwell in this place. 

Voice from the Crowd: We are delivered. Our ancient 
enemies are overcome; we are delivered. 

Jeremiah : Will ye steal, murder, and come and stand before 
me in this house and say, We are delivered, that ye may do these 
abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, be¬ 
come a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold I, even I, have 


198 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


seen it, saith Yahweh. But go ye unto my place in Shiloh 
and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 
And now, because ye have done all these works therefore will 
I do unto the house wherein ye trust as I have done to Shiloh. 
And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your 
brethren. 

The High Priest: (seizing Jeremiah roughly ) Thou shalt 
surely die. Why hast thou prophesied in the name of Yahweh, 
saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be 
desolate, without inhabitant? 

People: (shout as they drag him away ) To the gate for trial. 
To the princes for judgment! 

(Founded on Jer. 26) 

Here we have a picture of one of the bravest deeds 
a man ever dared. He risked his life to make his 
countrymen realize their danger. He wanted to 
save them from that danger not by urging them to 
fight the coming enemy or by trying to buy them off, 
but by becoming a stronger, finer nation morally. 
The words he seems most often to have said were, 

“Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause 
you to dwell in this place.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


A PROPHET ON TRIAL 

It was to the “New Gate” of the temple that the 
priests dragged Jeremiah for trial. The public 
gateway seems to have been the place where all 
ancient eastern peoples held their courts. This 
made it a public affair and gave any one who had 
any evidence a chance to shout it out. It gave the 
people a voice in the trial. The accuser made his 
complaint, the accused and his friends made their 
defence, and the people shouted their opinion. Then 
the judge, having heard all, decided whether the 
accused was guilty or not. Let us now picture for 
ourselves the trial of Jeremiah from the account 
given in his book. (Ch. 26: 8-24) 

TRIAL OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH 

(People and priests enter dragging along Jeremiah as they 
shout.) 

People: Thou shalt surely die! 

Ahikam: ( with a group of priests hastens forward) Why these 
shouts for death? 

Priest: (who has constituted himself judge, speaks to Jeremiah) 
Why hast thou prophesied in the name of Yahweh, saying, This 
house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be without in¬ 
habitant ? 

Ahikam: Truly, but why death? 

199 


200 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Priest: This man is worthy of death; for he hath prophesied 
against this city, as ye have heard with your ears. 

Jeremiah: ( stepping forward) Yahweh sent me to prophesy 
against the house and against this city all the words ye have 
heard. Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and 
obey the voice of Yahweh your God; and Yahweh will repent 
him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you. 

But as for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as is 
good and right in your eyes. Only know ye for certain that, if 
ye put me to death, ye shall bring innocent blood upon your¬ 
selves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: 
for of a truth Yahweh hath sent me unto you to speak all these 
words in your ears. 

People and Princes: Nay, this man is not worthy of death. 
Nay, he hath spoken to us in the name of Yahweh, our God. 
Ahikam: Hear ye! Micaiah the Morashtite prophesied in the 
days of Hezekiah, King of Judah; and he spake to all the people 
of Judah, saying, Thus saith Yahweh of hosts: Zion shall become 
heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a 
forest. Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all of Judah put him 
at all to death? Did he not fear Yahweh, and entreat the favor 
of Yahweh, and Yahweh repented him of the evil which he had 
pronounced against them? Thus should we commit great evil 
against our own souls. 

Priest: (to Ahikam) Wilt thou defend a destroyer of the holy 
city ? 

Ahikam : Jeremiah is not a destroyer. He warns that we may 
save. 

People: ( crowding around) A Savior, a Prophet! 

Ahikam: Thy hand hath saved him from the priests, (to 
Jeremiah) Come thou to the temple of Yahweh. 

(They lead the way and the people follow joyously while the 
angry priests are left alone.) 


In some such way Jeremiah won over the young 
princes of Judah and the hostile people; but another 


A PROPHET ON TRIAL 201 

prophet of the time, Uriah, did not escape with his 
life. When he spoke against the city and was 
threatened with death he fled to Egypt. But Jeho- 
iakim sought him out, brought him from Egypt, and 
had him put to death. ( Jev . 26: 20—23) This shows 
that it was a real danger of death from which Jere¬ 
miah was saved by Ahikam and his friends. 

It takes the moral strength out of most prophets 
to be the friend of princes. They are likely to 
think more of what the princes wish than of what is 
right. Not so with Jeremiah. He went on preach¬ 
ing his terrible message in new ways to awaken the 
people to their danger. Once he got some of the 
elders and some of the priests and took them to the 
Valley of Hinnom or Tophet. (See map of Jeru¬ 
salem) No doubt a crowd gathered as they went 
along to see what would happen. When they 
reached the edge of the valley, Jeremiah took a 
“potter’s earthen vessel” and, lifting it high, 
dashed it down upon the rocks saying, 

Thus saith Yahweh of Hosts; Even so will I break this 
city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that it cannot be 
made whole again: and they shall bury in Tophet, till there 
be no place to bury. 

Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord 
had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of 
Yahweh’s house, and said to all the people: 

Thus saith Yahweh of Hosts, God of Israel, Behold I 
will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the 
evil that I have pronounced against it; because they have 
made their neck stiff, that they might not hear my words. 
(Jer. 19:1-3, 10-15.) 


202 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


At another time Jeremiah learned a different les¬ 
son from a potter, which he taught to the people. 
Have you ever been in a potter’s shop and watched 
him hold the clay in his hand while with his foot he 
turned the wheel that made the ugly lump of clay 
into a beautiful vase? The many different shapes 
that a skilled potter can produce with the turn of 
his hand seem marvelous. One day Jeremiah went 
to see a potter work at his wheel, and as he watched 
he saw a vessel marred, that is, misshapen or 
wrongly marked by the potter. 

And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred 
in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, 
as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word 
of Yahweh came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot 
I do with you as the potter? saith Yahweh. Behold, as 
the clay in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, 0 
house of Israel. ( Jer . 18: 1-6) 

Judah was a vessel that had been marred and 
Yahweh, like the potter, was forced to make her 
again into another vessel. He had meant her to 
be a marvelously beautiful vase, but Judah herself 
had marred the pattern. That is one great dif¬ 
ference between Judah and the potter’s vessel,— 
Judah could refuse to become the kind of vessel 
Yahweh planned. Judah was like a live vase that 
could move about in the potter’s hand and spoil the 
design. Yahweh then, was about to deal harshly 
with Judah as with a bad potter’s vessel because she 
had marred the design. He wanted her to be a more 


A PROPHET ON TRIAL 


203 


beautiful Judah, and he had a right to say that she 
must be beautiful because he was the potter. 

1 ou may be sure that Jeremiah was hated for con¬ 
tinually preaching that Judah must be broken or 
remoulded. The following shows what happened to 
him once: 

Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was chief 
officer in the house of Yahweh, heard Jeremiah prophesy¬ 
ing these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the 
piophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper 
gate of Benjamin, which was in the house of Yahweh. 
0 Jer . 20 : 1 , 2 ) 

Certainly it was hard to be a prophet in those 
days! To be knocked down by an officer who did 
not like what you said must have been painful, but 
probably not so trying as to be put in the stocks. 
Many of the people who passed through the gate of 
Benjamin would stop and look at Jeremiah with his 
feet fastened between the boards. Some would be 
sad because they loved him and knew that his words 
were true, but most would laugh and point their 
fingers at him in scorn. 

No wonder that Jeremiah cried out in anguish, 

I am become a laughing-stock all the day, every one 
mocketh me. For as often as I speak, I cry out, I cry, 
Violence and spoil; because the word of Yahweh is made a 
reproach unto me, and a derision, all the day. And if I 
say, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in 
his name, then there is in mine heart as it were a burning 
fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, 
and I cannot contain. {Jer. 20:7-9.) 


204 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Jeremiah suffered so much that he sometimes 
thought he would never again speak the word of 
Yahweh, but then the fire of indignation burned 
within him and he cried out the truth again and 
again. Jeremiah was, then, one of the most cour¬ 
ageous of men for he kept right on with his work 
though it cost him suffering all along the way. 
Neither the favor of princes nor the enmity of of¬ 
ficers could move him from the right. Yahweh had 
indeed made him an iron pillar as he promised, 

Behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and 
an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land, 
against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, 
against the priests thereof, and against the people of the 
land. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall 
not prevail against thee: for I am with thee, saith Yahweh, 
to deliver thee. ( Jer. 1: 18, 19) 


v 


CHAPTER XXIII 


JUDAH’S PUNISHMENT BEGINS 

“The servants of Nebuchadrezzar King of Babylon 
came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.” 
(77 Kings 24:10) 

What excitement all around Jerusalem as the 
armies of Nebuchadrezzar marched up and in¬ 
trenched themselves around the city! Some people 
fled to the homes of their kinsmen in country vil¬ 
lages, but more people ran to get inside the walls 
of Jerusalem. Among those who took their things 
and ran into the city were the Rechabites. 1 They 
did not have to leave anything behind because they 
did not live in houses, nor sow seed, nor plant vine¬ 
yards. All their lives they refused to live in cities 
because they wanted to be always like their ances¬ 
tors who were desert people like the early children 
of Israel. But when danger threatened, it seems 
they forgot their scorn for the city and fled to its 
walls for protection. 

Another thing the Rechabites had been com¬ 
manded by their forefathers was never to drink 
wine. They must have been the first “teetotalers” 
for all other desert people drank wine and some- 

i Rechabites, a clan of the Kenites. (/ Chron. 2: 3, 55; Judges 
4: 17 and 5:24). 


205 


206 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


times got drunk, as Noah did. Perhaps Rechab saw 
that people were much happier when they did not 
do this. Anyway, the Rechabites had for many 
years kept the commandment of their fathers and 
had been different from others by not drinking wine. 

When Jeremiah heard that the Rechabites were 
in the city he decided upon a plan that would make 
them known to the people of Jerusalem. This is 
Jeremiah’s story: 

I took . . . the whole house of the Rechabites; and I 
brought them into the house of Yahweh, into the chamber 
of a man of God, which was by the chamber of the princes, 
and I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites 
bowls full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink 
ye wine. (, Jer . 35:3-5) 

How troubled and embarrassed they must have felt 
to have to refuse the hospitality of the prophet Jere¬ 
miah! It may be that these Rechabites were wor¬ 
shipers of Yahweh. They certainly would not have 
accepted his invitation if they had not had great 
respect for the prophet. Yet here he was asking 
them to do what they thought was wrong! They 
looked at the bowls of wine and the cups poured out 
for all; they looked at each other and with surprise 
at the prop'het who must have acted as though it 
would be right for them to drink it. Jeremiah, as 
we have seen before, was a dramatist. He could 
act a part , when he had a good purpose in mind- 
Finally the suspense and embarrassment at the feast 
in the temple chamber were ended by one of the 
Rechabites rising and saying: 


JUDAH’S PUNISHMENT BEGINS 207 

Me will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab, 
our father, commanded us saying, ye shall drink no wine, 
neither ye nor your sons forever: neither shall ye build 
house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: 
but all your days ye shall dwell in tents; that ye may live 
many days in the land wherein ye sojourn. And we have 
obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab in all that 
he charged us. (Jer. 35: 6-8) 

How Jeremiah’s face must have lighted up with 
joy as he heard this refusal of his hospitality! The 
Rechabites were courageous enough to do right; they 
had proved true. Now Jeremiah could go to the 
people with the message he had hoped to be able to 
give. He went to the people in the court of the 
temple and spoke the following words in the name 
of Yahweh: 

The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, that he com¬ 
manded his sons, not to drink wine, are performed, and 
unto this day they drink none, for they obey their father’s 
commandment: but I have spoken unto you rising up 
early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened unto 
me. . . . 

Forasmuch as the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab, 
have performed the commandment of their father which 
he commanded them, but the people have not hearkened 
unto me; therefore thus saith Yahweh, the God of Hosts, 
the God of Israel: 

Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all the habit- 
ants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced 
against them: because I have spoken unto them, but they 
have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they 
have not answered. (Jer. 35:14-17) 


208 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Although it was now too late for Judah to save 
herself, Jeremiah felt that Judah must know why 
she was being punished. The reason why was the 
all important thing. Jeremiah was like a parent, 
who, while he is punishing a child explains why he 
does so, that the child may not do wrong again. 
Now that Judah is tilled with horror at the coming 
of Nebuchadrezzar the conqueror, she must not 
blame Yahweh but her own wicked deeds. 

Jeremiah’s dearest friends found it very difficult 
to accept his teaching. Baruch was the young man 
who helped him write down his messages, but even 
as he wrote them they filled him with sorrow. Jere¬ 
miah knew this and one day he called Baruch to him 
and said: 

0 Baruch, thou didst say, Woe is me now! for Yahweh 
hath added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my 
groaning, and I find no rest. ( Jer . 45: 2, 3) 

Baruch must have been sorry that his friend had 
found out how unwillingly he wrote down the mes¬ 
sages of destruction. It seemed so terrible that 
Yahweh should break down that which he had built 
and pluck up that which he had planted that he could 
hardly write it on the parchment roll when Jeremiah 
pronounced the words. But there was another 
reason why it was hard for Baruch, it upset all his 
life plans. Apparently he had hoped to do great 
things; perhaps he had hoped to be a great teacher 
of the law, a great scribe in Israel. What could he 


JUDAH’S PUNISHMENT BEGINS 209 

hope for now with destruction facing Judah? Jere¬ 
miah tells him to stop thinking about himself: 

Seekest thou great things for thy self? Seek them 
not,” (Jer. 45:5) 

If he will put away his own ambitions and consider 
what a splendid nation Judah may become after she 
is punished and purified, he will not be so rebellious. 

Events moved on swiftly toward the awful punish¬ 
ment. One day the people of Jerusalem were hor¬ 
rified to find that Nebuchadrezzar had come up to 
the Holy City. How terrified all the people were 
is shown by what the king and the princes did. 
They were too frightened to resist. 

Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came unto the city, 
while his servants were besieging it; and Jehoiakim the 
king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and 
his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his 
officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth 
year of his reign. 

And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house 
of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king’s house, and 
cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king 
of Israel had made. . . . 

And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, 
and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand cap¬ 
tives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths; none re¬ 
mained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. 
And he carried away Jehoiakim to Babylon. (II Kings 
24: 11-15) 


210 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


What sorrow and despair filled Jerusalem! All 
the wealthy people and all the craftsmen who would 
be good workers in Babylon were hunted out and 
tied together into a captive train and marched off. 
Jeremiah wept with the others, for he knew that the 
heart of Yahweh was also filled with sorrow because 
he must punish his dearly beloved. He represents 
Yahweh as saying: 

I have forsaken mine house, 

I have cast off mine inheritance; 

I have given the dearly beloved of my soul 
Into the hands of her enemies. 

(, Jer . 12: 7) 


Jeremiah himself said, 

Woe is me for my hurt! my wound is grievous: but I 
said, Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it. (Jer. 
10: 19) 


CHAPTER XXIV 

JEREMIAH, THE SAVIOR OF JUDAH 

After that Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, had car¬ 
ried away captive Jaconiah, “son of Jehoiahaz” king of 
Judah, and the princes of Judah, Yahweh showed me, and 
behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of Yahweh. 

One basket had very good figs like the figs that are first 
ripe: and the other basket had very bad figs, which could 
not be eaten, they were so bad. Then said Yalrweh unto 
me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? and I said, Figs; the good 
figs, very good; and the bad, very bad. 

Thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel: Like these good 
figs so will I regard the captives of Judah whom I have 
sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for 
their good. ( Jer . 24: 1-5) 

The reason for the parable of the figs may have 
been that those who were left in Jerusalem were 
saying that they had not been dragged off as cap¬ 
tives because they were better than the rich who had 
gone. Probably the poor now had a chance to live 
in some of the palaces of the rich. Some of them 
held important places under the new king, Zedekiah, 
appointed by Nebuchadrezzar. But Jeremiah saw 
that these who had been left behind were no better 
than those who had gone to Babylon—indeed they 
were worse because they saw no good at all in the 

punishment except their own petty gain, Jeremiah, 

211 


212 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


therefore, looks entirely to the captives for the 
future of Judah and says in the name of Yahweh, 

I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will 
bring them again to this land: and I will build them and 
not pull them down; and I will plant them and not pluck 
them up. And I will give them an heart to know me, 
that I am Yahweh: and they shall be my people and I 
will be their God; for they shall return unto me with 
their whole heart. ( Jer . 24: 6, 7) 

But how long before this happy day of return? 
That was the question among the prophets of Jeru¬ 
salem. There was a certain Hananiah who, one 
day, stepped forward to Jeremiah in the temple 
court and said, 

Within two full years ... I will bring again to this 
place ... all the captives of Judah, that went to Baby¬ 
lon, saith Yahweh; for I will break the yoke of the king 
of Babylon. Then the prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen: 
Yahweh do so.” (Jer. 28:3-6) 

At this time Jeremiah was wearing a yoke about 
his neck as a sign that it was Yahweh’s will for 
Judah to wear the yoke of Babylon for a time. 
{Jer. 27: 2) 

Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from off the 
prophet Jeremiah’s neck, and brake it. And Hananiah 
spake in the presence of all the people, saying, thus saith 
Yahweh: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchad¬ 
rezzar. (Jer. 28:10, 11) 


JEREMIAH, SAVIOR OF JUDAH 213 

Jeremiah seems to have slipped quietly out of the 
crowd, but soon he returned, wearing an iron yoke, 
and standing before Hananiah said, 

“Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt 
make in their stead yokes of iron. Hear now, Hananiah; 
1 ahweh hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people 
to trust in a lie.” ( Jer . 28:13-15) 

Thus Jeremiah was compelled to do battle with 
false prophets who held out groundless hopes to 
the people. On one occasion he said to one of these 
prophets, 

What is the straw to the wheat? saith Yahweh. Is not 
my word like as fire? and like a hammer that beateth the 
rock in pieces ? . . . Behold I am against the prophets, 
saith Yahweh, that use their tongues, and say, He saith. 
. . . Yet I sent them not, nor commanded them; Neither 
shall they profit this people at all. {Jer. 23: 28-32) 

That gives us the difference between a true and 
a false prophet. The true, speaks the words that 
are profitable to the people, the false, the words 
that may be pleasant but are not true. Jeremiah is 
one of Judah’s great heroes for he stood alone for 
ten years in the falling city declaring the truth to 
the light-headed people, the false prophets, and the 
weakling king. 

When Jeremiah warned King Zedekiah that the 
Babylonians would return and destroy Jerusalem 
the king put him in prison in the ‘‘court of the 


214 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


guard” in the King’s house. ( Jer . 32:2-5) Once 
the king secretly asked Jeremiah, “Is there any 
word from Yahweh?” And Jeremiah answered, 
“There is. Thou shalt be delivered into the hand 
of the king of Babylon.” (Jer. 37:17) 

Back to prison Jeremiah went for thus speaking 
the truth to the king. And when the princes begged 
the king to put Jeremiah to death he offered no ob¬ 
jection. 

Then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the cis¬ 
tern . . . and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And 
in the cistern there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah 
sank in the mire. (Jer. 38: 6) 

We have seen that Jeremiah had some faithful 
friends. One of these was a black man, an Ethio¬ 
pian. His name, Ebed-melecli, means servant of 
the king. He could not bear to see Jeremiah die in 
that filthy dungeon. So he ran to the king, who be¬ 
came frightened and ordered him to take some men 
to help get Jeremiah out. 

So Ebed-melech took the men with him, and went 
into the house of the king under the treasury, and took 
thence old cast clouts and old rotten rags, and let them 
down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. And Ebed- 
melech the Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, 

Put now these old cast clouts and rotten rags under 
thine armholes under the cords. And Jeremiah did so. 
So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords and took him 
up out of the dungeon: and Jeremiah remained in the 
court of the guards. (Jer. 38:11-13) 


JEREMIAH, SAVIOR OF JUDAH 215 

But Jeremiah, though cruelly dragged about and 
shut up in prison, is no longer a gloomy discouraged 
prophet, for he sees continually the new Judah that 
will come out of this terrible experience. One day 
his uncle’s son came to ask him to buy his field. At 
first he was astonished at the idea of buying land 
in a place made desolate by invading armies. Then 

he seemed to hear the voice of Yahweh speaking to 
him, 

Behold, I am Yahweh, the God of all flesh. Is there 
anything too hard for me ? Fields shall be bought in this 
land, whereof ye say, It is desolate, without man or beast. 
For thus saith Yahweh: Like as I have brought all the 
great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all 
the good I have promised them. ( Jer . 32: 42) 

The greatest words that Jeremiah spoke were 
those concerning the new covenant. You remember 
that all Israel had made a sacred covenant with 
Yahweh long ago in the desert; now that covenant 
has been broken and a new one must come: 

THE NEW COVENANT 

Behold, the days come, saith Yahweh, that I will make a 
new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house 
of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with 
their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to 
bring them out of the land of Egypt ; which my cove¬ 
nant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith 
Yahweh. 

But this is the covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel after those days, saith Yahweh; I will 


216 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts 
will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be 
my people: and they shall teach no more every man his 
neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Yah- 
weli: For they shall all know me, from the least of them 
unto the greatest of them, saith Yahweh: For I will for¬ 
give their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. 
(Jer. 31: 31-34) 

What magic method is this of writing on the 
heart 1 If the law can be written on the heart or on 
the mind of the people, then they will keep it because 
they want to. The old covenant was not in the 
people’s hearts, and when finally it was written in 
a book, they did not keep it. 

Because Jeremiah, ever since he was a boy in 
his father’s house, “knew Yahweh” and talked with 
him, he was sure that all the people of Judah could 
talk with Y^ahweh even though they were in a far¬ 
away land. 

When Jeremiah gave to the people who were 
going off to Babylon the idea that they could “know 
Yahweh” even though they were away from their 
temple, he did the finest thing for them that he could. 
He wrote that idea on their minds; and with that 
idea within them they could be true to Yahweh in 
a strange land, and they could become the new 
Judah. 

Jeremiah is 'sometimes regarded as the greatest 
of the Hebrew prophets because he gave to the 
Hebrew nation a great idea which no enemy could 
destroy! He thus made it possible for the Hebrew 


JEREMIAH, SAVIOR OF JUDAH 217 


people to live as Hebrews though their country was 
ruined. Jeremiah is great because he found out for 
himself the greatest ideas, suffered most for them, 
and succeeded in getting them into the minds of the 
people. 


CHAPTER XXV 


EZEKIEL 

Among the people marched off to Babylon was a 
young priest named Ezekiel. After the long jour¬ 
ney across the desert he found himself “ among the 
captives by the river Chebar.” ( Ezek . 1:1) The 
Babylonian Empire lay between the two great riv¬ 
ers and the land there was irrigated and kept 
fertile by canals. The river Chebar was one of 
these canals. It was probably near the city of 
Nippur. A tablet has been found there containing 
the name Ka-ba-ru. Perhaps Ezekiel’s whole 
family and some of their friends were put by 
this canal to help work on the land. 

One day Ezekiel saw a great storm cloud rolling 
up into the sky from the north. Perhaps he was 
out in the fields at work. In those lands where it 
did not often rain people were especially glad to see 
storm clouds. Ezekiel says, 

I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the 
north, a great cloud, with a fire infolding itself, and a 
brightness round about it, and out of the midst thereof 
as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. 
(Ezek. 1: 4) 

This is not unlike the brilliant storm clouds which 

one can sometimes see in any land, especially at 

218 


EZEKIEL 


219 


sunset. To Ezekiel the clouds became more than 
clouds, however, by the power of the thought within 
him. Why had the terrible calamity come upon his 
nation! Why should he be toiling here in exile 
when at home in Jerusalem he might have been a 
priest of Yahweh! What did Yahweh wish him to 
do now! As Ezekiel turned over such questions in 
his mind the clouds seemed to take on the shape of 
“four living creatures.” Like the cherubim in the 
temple at Jerusalem, not unlike the strange figures 
in the Babylonian temples, the clouds looked. 
To Ezekiel they meant that the great Power of the 
World was about to speak to him. He fell upon his 
face and out of the cloud he seemed to hear a great 
voice: 

I 

Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto 
thee. And the Spirit entered into me when he spake 
unto me and set me upon my feet; and I heard him that 
spake unto me. And he said unto me, Son of man, I 
send thee to the children, of Israel: They and their fathers 
have transgressed against me. And the children are im¬ 
pudent and stiffhearted; I do send thee unto them: and 
thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith Yahweh God. ( Ezek . 
2: 1-4) 

i 

Ah, then it was indeed because Judah had sinned 
against Yahweh that this calamity had come upon 
them. How often the boy Ezekiel had heard the 
old prophet Jeremiah declare Judah’s wickedness 
and coming captivity! Now his words had come 
true. But the people of Judah were “impudent and 


220 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


stiffhearted ”; they did not like to think they de¬ 
served this captivity. The Voice from the cloud 
said further to Ezekiel: 

But thou, Son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not 
thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, 
and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, an 
hand was put forth unto me; and, la, a roll of a book was 
therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written 
within and without: and there was written therein la¬ 
mentations, and mourning, and woe, and he said unto 
me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go, 
speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth 
and he caused me to eat the roll. ( Ezek. 2: 8-3 : 2) 

Why eat a book? He means that every word of 
that book must be understood. No actual roll is 
here, but a message to Judah long enough to fill a 
book, and full of woe. What is the woeful message 
to Judah? The only way to find out is to watch 
Ezekiel. First he goes, perhaps from his place of 
work, to the group of captives that he is nearest. 

Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel-abib, that 
dwelleth by the river Chebar, and to where they dwell; 
and I sat there astonished among them seven days. ( Ezek . 
3:15) 

It was not that he did not know what to say but 
that he could not get courage to say it. But Yahweh 
spoke to him as he sat upon the ground and at last 
he found a way to make known the woeful message 
of the book. It was a boy’s way of acting things 


EZEKIEL 221 

I 

out. It seemed to him that the Voice told him how, 
thus: 

Thou also*, Son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it be¬ 
fore thee, and portray upon it a city, even Jerusalem. 
And lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and 
cast a mound against it; set camps also against it, and 
plant battering-rams against it round about. And take 
thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron 
between thee and the city: and set thy face toward it, 
and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. 
This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. Moreover, lie 
thou upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house 
of Israel upon it. ( Ezek . 4:1-4) 

What did the captives of Tel-abib think of such 
strange actions? First, some one would say that 
Ezekiel had stopped working and was sitting looking 
as if he had some terrible thing to tell. Then the 
boys and girls, perhaps, would spread the news that 
he had taken a tablet and set it up and drawn the 
city of Jerusalem upon it. Then he began making 
war upon this city which he had set up in the sand. 
Then next he had built a fort, perhaps with a few 
bricks buried in the sand. He set up a mound on 
which he put something like a battering ram to 
throw stones against the walls. He made trenches 
for the enemies of the city to hold during the siege. 
Then he took a flat griddle and, getting behind it, 
acted as though he were directing the siege of the 
city. It would be strange if by this time Ezekiel 
was not surrounded by a crowd. At least the boys 


222 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


and girls were there watching every move of the 
game. Perhaps the older people would hurry by 
when they saw that this game was not for fun but 
to tell them that their holy city must be destroyed. 
Soon the whole colony of captives would know that 
Ezekiel was preaching to them by his little drama 
this message: Jerusalem must be destroyed; enter 
into your life as captives and make the best of it; 
repent of your sins. This, then, was the message 
in the book that Ezekiel had “eaten.” It was his 
sad duty to destroy the hope of return to Jerusalem 
by any of these captives, so that they would face 
their sins and repent. In so many ways did Ezekiel 
tell the people that their captivity was a punishment 
for their sins that at last some of them answered 
him. This is what they said: 

The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s 
teeth are set on edge. ( Ezek . 18: 2) 

By this they mean that they were suffering not 
for their own sins but for those of the wicked kings 
of Israel, and other unjust ones of their ancestors. 
To this Ezekiel replied in the strongest language: 

As I live, saith Yahweh God. . . . Behold all souls are 
mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the 
son is mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die. {Ezek. 
18: 3, 4 & Jer. 31: 29) 

It is easy to blame other people for one’s troubles 
and especially in those days did sons blame their 


EZEKIEL 


223 


fathers as heads of the family. Although Jeremiah 
was proclaiming it in Jerusalem, Ezekiel was the 
first to lay great emphasis upon individual responsi¬ 
bility. Each soul stands alone in the sight of God. 

The soul that sinneth it shall die: the son shall not bear 
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father hear the 
iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous 
shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall 
be upon him. ( Ezek . 18: 20) 

But this must have made the captives even more 
discouraged. What good is it to be proved wicked 
and so the cause of your own troubles? Just this, 
that you can then change your doings and so get rid 
of your troubles. This was what Ezekiel wanted 
his brother captives to do. He assured them that 
Yahweh was not pleased that the Judean nation was 
now almost completely destroyed; he was sending 
his prophets to them to urge them to rise up and 
live, even though their nation seemed dead and 
buried. 

I will judge you, 0 house of Israel, every one accord¬ 
ing to his ways, saith Yahweh God. Return ye, and turn 
yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall 
not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your trangres- 
sions wherein ye have trangressed; and make you a new 
and an ardent spirit: for why will ye die, 0 house of 
Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that 
dieth, saith Yahweh God: wherefore turn yourselves, and 
live. (Ezek. 18 : 30-32) 


CHAPTER XXVI 


THE HOLY CITY IS DESTROYED 

What was happening in Jerusalem during the 
days that the exiles in captivity were mournfully 
longing for their homes but were being told by 
Ezekiel that they would never see them? Jeremiah 
was still there telling the Jerusalemites that there 
would be some hope for them if they would repent. 
And Zedekiah, the king of Jerusalem, did at first lead 
the people in an attempt to make some things right. 
They read in their old Law Book that after six years 
all Hebrew slaves should be set free, and king and 
people decided to free their slaves. At a public 
gathering the people made a covenant and the king 
proclaimed liberty to the slaves. 

It was a strange ceremony by which they pledged 
themselves to make their slaves free. They cut a 
calf into two pieces and in the temple marched be¬ 
tween the parts, vowing, 

To proclaim liberty, every man to his brother, and every 
man to his neighbor. (Jer. 34: 17) 

But soon people forgot their fear of being carried 
off to Babylon; they thought they were foolish to 
have repented and to have tried to do right. They 
went after the people that they had made free and 

224 


THE HOLY CITY IS DESTROYED 225 

forced them back into slavery. This brought Jere¬ 
miah forward with a message from Yahweh: 

Ye turned and profaned my name, and caused every 
man his servant, and every man his hand-maid, whom ye 
had let go free at their pleasure, to return; and ye brought 
them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for 
hand-maids. Therefore thus saith Yahweh: . . . Zedekiah, 
king of Judah, and his princes will I give into the hand 
of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek 
their life, and into the hand of the king of Babylon’s 
army, which are gone up from you. Behold, I will com¬ 
mand, saith \ ahweh, and cause them to return to this 
city; and they shall fight against it, and take it, and 
burn it with fire. ( Jer . 34:16-22) 

Thus what Ezekiel was preaching in Babylon to 
the captives, Jeremiah had been proclaiming for ten 
years in Jerusalem to those who were left, the neces¬ 
sary destruction of the Holy City because of the 
sins of the people. As we have seen (Chap. XXIV) 
this had kept Jeremiah in prison a great deal of the 
time receiving “ daily a loaf of bread out of the 
baker's street, until all the bread in the city was 
spent.” (Jer. 37:21). On this second coming of 
Nebuchadrezzar against Jerusalem the city was be¬ 
sieged for a year and a half. “The famine was 
sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the 
people of the land.” (II Kings 25:3) 

At last a breach was made in the city wall and the 
Babylonian soldiers came rushing in. Now the 
princes of Babylon sat in the gate as the rulers of 
the city. 


226 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


When Zedekiah the king of Judah and all the men of 
war saw them, then they fled, and went forth out of the 
city by night, by the way of the king’s garden . . . but 
the army of the Chaldeans pursued after them. ( Jer. 
39: 4, 5) 

Strange to say, the Babylonian captain of the 
guard took Jeremiah out of prison and said to him: 

Behold I loose thee this day from the chains which are 
upon thine hand. If it seem good unto thee to come with 
me unto Babylon, come, and I will look well unto thee; 
but if it seem ill unto thee to come with me into Babylon, 
forebear: behold, all the land is before thee; whither it 
seemeth good and convenient unto thee to go, thither go. 
{Jer. 40: 4, 5) 

But Jeremiah had no mind to receive favors from 
the enemies of Judah; he had not declared that 
Judah should fall before the Babylonians because of 
any desire to please Nebuchadrezzar or his captains. 
The only thing that could have made Jeremiah wish 
to go to Babylon was his belief that the future of 
Judah rested with the captives. He had written 
letters to the captives expressing his hope. (See 
Jer. 29) Why did he not now go to Babylon to help 
the captives fulfill his hope? Perhaps because he 
knew that Ezekiel was there, or perhaps it was be¬ 
cause he saw that the poor people left in Judah 
needed him. He stayed with the people and saw the 
terrible destruction of the Holy City and Temple. 

Nebuzar-adan burnt the house of Yahweh, and the king’s 
house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great 


THE HOLY CITY IS DESTROYED 227 

house burnt he with fire, and all the army of the Chal¬ 
deans that were with the captain of the guard brake down 
the walls of Jerusalem round about. And the pillars of 
brass that were in the house of Yahweh, and the bases 
and the brazen sea that were in the house of Yahweh, 
did the Chaldeans break in pieces, and carried the brass of 
them to Babylon. And the pots, and the shovels, and the 
snuffers, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass where¬ 
with they ministered, took they away. (II Kings 25: 8-14) 

All these sacred things the people had always been 
afraid even to touch. How strange and unbeliev¬ 
able it must have been to see these ancient temple 
pillars broken up by unclean hands! How their 
hearts must have quaked with fear to see the walls 
smoke and flame! The Holy of Holies, the dwelling- 
place of Yahweh guarded by the great-winged cher¬ 
ubim—how could it be destroyed? Had not Isaiah 
said it could not be! But Jeremiah was now saying 
it must perish and that Yahweh could be worshiped 
without the temple! 

Poor bewildered people, which way should they 
turn? Some gave themselves up at once to the 
Chaldeans. Some tried to hide in the hills, some 
started for Egypt. News came that the fleeing king 
had been caught and taken to the headquarters of 
Nebuchadrezzar’s army. 

They slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and 
put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in fetters, 
and carried him to Babylon. (II Kings 25:7) 

But in spite of his cruelty to Zedekiah, the Baby- 


228 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Ionian monarch appointed as governor an excellent 
young man, Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, one of 
Jeremiah’s friends. 

Then went Jeremiah unto Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, 
to Mizpah and dwelt with him among the people that 
were left in the land. ( Jer . 40: 6) 

It is possible that Jeremiah and this new governor 
of Judah might have helped the poor people left in 
the land to a fairly comfortable life, but in war and 
disorder bad people are likely to get power. So it 
happened that an assassin named Ishmael killed 
Gedaliah and some of his friends and threw their 
bodies into a pit. This filled many people with fear 
so that they fled to Egypt. They asked Jeremiah’s 
advice, and he told them that the message of Yahweh 
to them was, 

If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you, 
and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not 
pluck you up. {Jer. 42: 10) 

This made the people furiously angry. Could they 
endure any more! No, they would give up Judah 
and Yahweh, and flee to Egypt where they would not 
“have hunger of bread.” {Jer. 42:14) They 
seized Jeremiah and dragged him off to Egypt too. 
{Jer. 43: 6) Perhaps they thought they would pre¬ 
vent the punishment of Yahweh from falling too 
heavily upon them if they had his prophet with them. 
But they did not listen to the words of Jeremiah in 
Egypt and when he reproved them for worshiping 


THE HOLY CITY IS DESTROYED 229 

the “Queen of Heaven’’ ( Jer . 44:17) instead of 
Yahweh they were furious with rage. An old story 
says that they stoned the old prophet to death. This 
is not unlikely since his whole life is the story of a 
man who loved and lived for the people when they 
did not understand him and even when they treated 
him cruelly. Jeremiah once pictured Yahweh like 
a father saying to rebellious Judah, “I have loved 
thee with an everlasting love.” {Jer. 31: 3) 

So it was with Jeremiah himself—he loved Judah 
to the last and said that this seeming destruction of 
the nation should not be the end. This great soul 
died a martyr to the desire to keep the soul of Judah 
alive. In later years people came to know how 
much he had done for Judah and a poet wrote a won¬ 
derful poem which may well be applied to Jeremiah 
saying, 

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised 
for our iniquities. (Isa. 53: 5) 

To the sorrowful captives in far-away Babylon, 
and to Ezekiel sitting speechless with grief came one 
day a dusty, weary traveler. He was one who had 
“escaped out of Jerusalem” and perhaps hoped to 
find his family among the captives. His words as 
he probably fell down with grief and exhaustion 
were, “The city is smitten.” ( Ezek . 33: 21) 

One can almost hear the moaning sound of the 
mourners that must have gone up all over the sec¬ 
tion of the city where the captives lived. No captors 
could keep them from grief over the fall of their be- 


230 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


loved Holy City. Judah’s sins had brought her to 
this terrible moment when all that she held most 
sacred seemed lost. A poem was written by some 
one who had seen the destruction of Jerusalem. 
Let us see how the people felt: 

A Lamentation 

How hath Yahweh covered the daughter of Zion with a 
cloud in his anger! 

He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty 
of Israel, 

And hath not remembered his foot-stool in the day of his 
anger. 

• ••••••• 

He hath destroyed his place of assembly: 

Yahweh hath caused solemn assembly and sabbath to be 
forgotten in Zion, 

And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the 
king and the priest. 

Yahweh hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanc¬ 
tuary. 

{Lam. 2: 1-7) 

Remembering the terrible days of the famine dur¬ 
ing the siege of Jerusalem the poet is filled with 
grief, 

Because the young children and the sucklings swoon in 
the streets of the city. 

They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? 

When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, 
When their soul is poured out in their mother’s bosom. 


THE HOLY CITY IS DESTROYED 231 


What shall I testify unto thee? What shall I liken to 
thee, 0 daughter of Jerusalem? . . . 

Is this the city that man called the perfection of beauty, 
the joy of the whole earth? 

{Lam. 2: 11-15) 

In another poem the author shows that he fully 
understands that Yahweh has not willingly brought 
sorrow upon his holy people but it has come because 
they did not remain holy. 

It is because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities 
of her priests, 

That have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her, 
They wander as blind men in the streets, they are polluted 
with blood, 

So that men cannot touch their garments. 

{Lam. 4: 13, 14) 


CHAPTER XXVII 

JUDAH GOES TO SCHOOL IN CAPTIVITY 

Who would have thought that the dismal young 
prophet Ezekiel would have been the one to rouse 
his people to actual interest in a new commonwealth 
for Judah? Some of the people must have almost 
hated him for always talking to them about their 
sins and the destruction of Jerusalem. When the 
blow came and the Holy City was no more, they 
would certainly have turned away from Ezekiel and 
from all hope had he not spoken to them with new 
words. But then there came to Ezekiel another 
vision which he passed on to the people: 

THE VISION OF THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES 

The hand of Yahweh was upon me, and he carried me out—and 
set me down in the valley; and it was full of bones; . . . and lo, 
they were very dry. 

Voice of Yahweh: Son of Man, can these bones live? 
Ezekiel: 0 Yahweh God, thou knowest. 

Voice of Yahweh: Prophesy over these bones and say unto 
them, 

0 ye dry bones, hear the word of Yahweh, 

Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. 

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there 
w T as a noise, and behold an earthquake, and the bones came to¬ 
gether, bone to his bone. . . . 


232 


JUDAH GOES TO SCHOOL 233 

I beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came 

up, and skin covered them above: but there was no breath in 
them. 

Voice of Yahweh : Prophesy unto the wind, son of man, and 
say to the wind, Thus saith Yahweh God: Come from the four 
winds, 0 breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may 

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into 

them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great 
army. 

Voice of Yahweh : Son of man, these bones are the whole house 
of Israel: Behold, 0 my people, I will open your graves, and 
cause you to come out of your graves; and I will bring you into 
the land of Israel. And I will put my spirit in you, and ye shall 
live, and^ I will place you in your own land: and ye shall know 

that I Yahweh have spoken it, and performed it, saith Yahweh 
{Ezek. 37:1-14.) 

Life once more after the burial in a strange land 
and the destruction ot one*s home? No wonder that 
this new message brought the people again crowd¬ 
ing round Ezekiel. If dry bones could be brought 
to life then indeed Judah might by the power of the 
breath of God come to life. A new spirit went 
through the colony of captives; the bowed heads 
were raised and a new light came into many eyes. 
The hopes of Jeremiah were actually fulfilled as his 
words were repeated by Ezekiel and taken up by 
the people: 

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit 
will I put within you: and I will take away the stony 
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 
And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to 


234 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, 
and do them. ( Ezek . 36: 26, 27. Compare Jer. 32: 39) 

To walk in the statutes of the law, that is what 
Ezekiel laid upon the newly encouraged people. 
Had not all their troubles come from their sins? 
Then the way to have happiness in the future will 
be to do Yahweh’s will. To inspire the people with 
this idea Ezekiel drew a picture of the perfect com- 
munity as it should be built in Jerusalem in the 
future. 

In a vision he saw the temple of the future not 
only restored but enlarged and beautified. There 
were more courts, and they were magnificently 
decorated with cherubim and palm-trees. But the 
important new thing in Ezekiel’s dream-temple was 
that it should shut out all uncleanness. To make 
this sure he shut the people out of the inner court 
where they used to come to see the entrance to the 
Holy of Holies when the priests went in for them. 
In the new temple the people must never go farther 
than an outer court. A thick wall shut them out 
and another wall outside the temple shut out all 
Gentiles. Priests’ houses were to be built around 
the temple to protect it and great gates had special 
guards. 

Another change Ezekiel proposed was that only 
priests of the line of Zadok (as he himself was) 
should act as priests in the new temple. The 
Levites were to become temple servants. This 
would make it possible never to allow any 


i 


JUDAH GOES TO SCHOOL 


235 


outsider in even to clean the floors of the temple. 
All this is a plan, you see, for keeping the temple 
pure, but notice what kind of purity it is— 
ceremonial purity. That is, Ezekiel is not thinking 
here so much about whether a man is good or wicked 
as whether he is a priest or an ordinary man. He 
seems to think that an ordinary man would make the 
Holy Place unclean when a priest would not. Of 
course it actually depends upon whether the person 
is wicked or not. But Ezekiel here gives a turn to 
Judah’s thinking that changes the whole of Judah’s 
history. See how important is thinking! Ezekiel 
is like the teacher in a school who sets all his pupils 
to work upon certain problems and leads them along 
to think just as he does. 

Now Ezekiel sets all the captives to studying how 
they can become holy so as to live in the Judean 
community of the future. But he makes them think 
especially about what they shall do to be ceremo¬ 
nially holy, for instance, just how to keep the Sab¬ 
bath. Is it right to light a fire and cook one’s break¬ 
fast on the Sabbath! Is it right to take a journey! 
Many such questions were talked about by Ezekiel 
and by young men who became his disciples. They 
gathered all the copies of the law that had been 
brought from Jerusalem to see what it said, and 
they began making notes about what Ezekiel and 
other teachers said the law meant. 

Certainly it is fine to see the exiles forming these 
little schools and studying every minute they can 
get away from their work. But we can’t help being 


236 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


sorry that Ezekiel led them to think so much about 
keeping certain rules and ceremonies. Because holi¬ 
ness, the prophets had long taught, is a matter of 
the heart, not of keeping rules about how to wash 
the hands. Ezekiel cared about the heart, too, and 
lie set people to reading the old prophets, which was 
tine. Perhaps no one had collected the writings of 
the prophets before, but now they searched every¬ 
where and got all the rolls and parts of rolls and 
pieced them together into books of the prophets so 
that people could study them. Of course it was on 
the Sabbath day that people had the most time to 
study. So many people were interested that they 
needed houses in which to keep their books. So it 
came about that there were special houses for the 
study of the holy writings. Afterward, in Pales¬ 
tine, these houses were called synagogues, which 
name means places for the people to come together. 
A visitor to Palestine would have seen an earnest, 
studious people. They would get together every 
Sabbath, and read and learn by heart some part of 
the law or prophets. The whole people went to 
school to the teachers of the holy books. 

What books did they have to study? They had 
only a few of those making up the Old Testament. 
These seem to have been: 

(1) The Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20: 22-23:19) 

(2) The Old Story-Books now called J. and E. 

(3) Amos, except the end: Ch. 9:11-15. 

(4) Hosea —parts of the book. 

(5) Micah (Chs. 1-3) 


JUDAH GOES TO SCHOOL 237 

(6) The Book found in the Temple. Devi. 12-26, 
28. 

(7) Parts of Judges and Kings . 

(8) Isaiah . Chs. 1-39 in part. 

(9) Jeremiah —most of the book as it had been 
put together by Baruch. 

Now for the first time these books were brought 
together. But the teachers who used them were not 
only collectors of the old sacred books, they were 
editors and re-writers. For instance, some one 
added the end to the book of Amos . This old 
prophet had announced the destruction of Israel. 
His words had proved true, 0, how sadly true for 
both Israel and Judah. But now a new hope had 
come;—Israel and Judah are certainly to be re¬ 
stored sometime. Every reader of Amos ought to 
know that the time had come when his woes are to 
be replaced by blessings. Therefore they added 
to his prophesy these words: 

In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that 
is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will 
raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of 
old. (Amos 9:11) 

Many such additions were made to the prophets; 
but especially these editors of the old books worked 
on the Law Book because they wanted the people to 
follow the law carefully. So they enlarged the book 
of instruction that Hilkiah had found in the temple 
making it into our book of Deuteronomy, and they 
made a little code of Holiness to give directions 


238 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


about the clean and the unclean. They also re-wrote 
the story of Israel and Judah as contained in parts 
of Judges and Kings. They wanted to point out 
which kings of Israel were good and kept the law; 
they wanted to show that those who kept the law 
prospered and those who did not had a hard time. 
And one strange idea that the people of the exile got 
was this,—that the people long ago were good and 
most of the people of later times, bad. With this 
idea in mind they re-wrote the old story-books J. 
and E. and pieced the two together showing what 
splendid followers of Yahweh the old Patriarchs, 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were. Then because 
these fathers of Israel were thought to be so pleas¬ 
ing to Yahweh, some people wrote a whole new story 
of the entrance into Canaan,—the book of Joshua . 
Here Joshua appears as a triumphant hero always 
conquering the Canaanites, whereas the book of 
Judges shows that the conquest of Canaan was most 
difficult, and that the Israelites were often defeated. 

All this means that the Judean exiles were ideal¬ 
ists, that is, they believed that their most beautiful 
hopes could come true and were willing to work for 
them. They would not give up their beloved Judah 
though all her outer riches were destroyed. During 
the exile they developed their inner riches,—their 
ideals of the perfect law, the perfect community, the 
perfect worship. These things no invading army, 
no slave-drivers could take away from them. Thus 
Judah lived in exile and studied and prepared for 
the day of freedom. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


JUDAH A LIGHT, OF THE NATIONS 

To the captives of Babylon, bound to their work 
by day and bowed over their holy books by night, 
there came again the voice of a prophet: 

Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. 
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, 
That her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is 
pardoned, 

For she hath received from Yahweh’s hand double for all 
her sins. 

(Isa. 40: 1, 2) 

What? Judah’s debt for her sins paid? Hard, in¬ 
deed, it had been for the proud princes and people 
of Judah to be willing to say that they deserved 
their captivity. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel had 
helped them to see it, and now what joy to hear 
words of comfort from one who spoke again in the 
name of Yahweh! Nor was this speaker some one 
far away, but one of their own number, one who 
knew what life in a strange land meant. Perhaps 
he could remember, when a boy, seeing and hearing 
Ezekiel teaching the people, but his chief inspiration 
came out of the books of the prophets, especially 
Jeremiah. No name has remained attached to this 

239 


240 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


man, but that he was a real man in Babylon is shown 
by the fact that he had a definite program beginning 
at Babylon which he put into these words: 

Hark! there is a cry: Clear ye in the wilderness the way 
of Yakweh; 

Make plain in the desert a highway for our God, 

Let every mountain and hill sink down, and every valley 
be uplifted, 

And let the steep ground become level, and the rough 
country plain! 

And the glory of Yahweh will be revealed, 

And all flesh shall see it together, 

For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it. 

(Isa. 40: 3-5) 

Now is the time to prepare for a journey from 
Babylon to Jerusalem across the desert! (See 
map.) The time is at hand when the words of Jere¬ 
miah and Ezekiel shall be fulfilled by a return to 
Judah. How did this man dare utter such words? 
How could he know that affairs in Babylon were to 
change? Because, like Isaiah and the other proph¬ 
ets, he not only cherished in his heart great hopes 
but he looked out on the world to see when there 
was any chance of fulfillment. This young man did 
not keep his eyes on his holy books only nor even 
on the affairs of the people close around him. He 
knew what was going on among the great empires 
of the world. He was watching the career of a 
young man named Cyrus, belonging to a small 


JUDAH A LIGHT OF THE NATIONS 241 


country east of Babylon. In a few years Cyrus had 
organized the Mede-Persian empire, then started out 
to make conquest of the rest of the world. 

Perhaps Cyrus did not attract the attention of the 
world until he overthrew Croesus at Sardis. For 
years treasures had been piling up in this city, well 
fortified behind its mountains. Croesus was the 
richest man in the world; lie was proud and felt 
sure of his power. When a Greek prophetess at 
Delphi told him that if he went to war he would 
“destroy a mighty empire” it never occurred to him 
that it might be his own. But soon Cyrus besieged 
his capital, took the vast treasures of Sardis, and led 
Croesus away captive. (See Herodotus 1:73-84) 
Perhaps it was when Cyrus had startled the world 
with this deed that our prophet of the exile began 
to speak of him thus: 

Who was it that roused up from the East, 

Him on whose steps attends victory, 

That brings up before him people, 

And into kings strikes a terror? 

His sword makes them like dust, 

His bow like driven stubble; 

He pursues them, passes on in safety; 

The path with his feet he does not tread. 

(Isa. 41: 2, 3) 

More remarkable still, this Judean prophet actually 
names Cyrus as the one anointed by Yahweh to 
carry out his purposes. 


242 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


I am Yahweh . . . that saith of Cyrus, He is my shep¬ 
herd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying of 
Jerusalem, She shall be built; and to the temple, Thy 
foundation shall be laid. Thus saith Yahweh to his 
anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to sub¬ 
due nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings;’ 
to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be 
shut; I will go before thee, and make the rugged places 
plain: I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in 
sunder the bars of iron. (Isa. 44:24^28; 45:1, 2) 

To the “hundred gated Babylon” this conqueror 
will come. When he has established his power he 
will be the long awaited deliverer of Judah. The 
prophet does not mean to imply that Cyrus ever 
heard of this Yahweh who is leading him to free the 
people. He knows that Cyrus worships his own 
gods. It is interesting that we have a clay cylinder 
from the time of Cyrus, telling how Marduk the 
chief god of Babylon helped him take the city: 

“Marduk, the Lord, the protector of his people, looked 
with joy upon his (Cyrus’s) beneficent deeds and upright 
heart. He commanded his (Cyrus’s) march to his own 
(Marduk’s) city Babylon, caused him to take the road 
to Tintir (Babylon). Like a friend and helper he 
marched by his side.” 

“I, Cyrus, king of hosts, the eternal seed of royalty 
whose kingdom Bel and Nebo love, whose rule they longed 
for to their heart’s joy,—I made my entry into Babylon 
in peace.” (From the “Clay Cylinder.” See Century 
Bible, Isaiah Yol. II, p. 342) 

Cyrus believed that all gods were on his side and 


JUDAH A LIGHT OF THE NATIONS 243 


he was ready to worship any of them. Far different 
was the thought of the prophet of Judah. To him 
there is but One God in the world: 

I am Yahweh, there is none else; besides me there is 
no God: I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me: 
that they may know from the rising sun, and from the 
west, that there is none beside me: I am Yahweh, and 
there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; 
I make peace and create evil; I am Yahweh. (Isa. 45: 
5-7) 

One God over the whole earth—this is one of the 
great ideas of this prophet of the exile. By what¬ 
ever name men may call him, whether they know of 
him at all or not, there is but one God. Idols, what 
are they? 

To whom will ye liken God, 

And what sort of image place beside him? 

An image! a craftsman has cast it, 

And a goldsmith overlays it with gold. 

(Isa. 40: 18, 19) 

How absurd it is to make an image and then walk 
in a procession and adore it! Such gods are noth¬ 
ing and are not to be considered beside him who is 
the 41 Creator of the ends of the earth.” (Isa. 40: 
28) 

But why does this God of the whole world care so 
much for poor little Judah? Why should he lead a 
conqueror like Cyrus to free the little slave nation? 
Because Judah is to be a “Servant” to the world! 
Here we have an entirely new idea so magnificent 


244 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


that it is not easy to understand it fully. This new 
idea of the greatness of service is set forth in four 
short poems. The first one is as follows: 

Yahweh’s Servant 

Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; 

My chosen, in whom my soul delights; 

I have put my spirit upon him, 

He will set forth the law to the nations. 

He will not cry aloud, nor roar as a lion, 

Nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. 

A cracked reed he will not break 

And a dim burning wick he will not quench. 

Faithfully he will set forth the law; 

He will not burn dimly nor be crushed in spirit, 

Till he have set the law in the earth, 

And for his instruction the far countries wait. 

(Isa. 42: 1-4) 

Here it is plain that the Servant is one who is to 
carry great good to the whole world. This is stated 
still more clearly in a verse from one of the other 
poems: 

It is too light a thing to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 

And to restore the preserved of Israel; 

So I set thee as a light of the nations. 

That my deliverance may be to the end of the earth. 

(Isa. 49: 6) 

The new idea of this prophet is, then, that Judah 
is to be a “ Light of the Nations , 99 


JUDAH A LIGHT OF THE NATIONS 245 


They had been punished in the captivity for their 
sins, but why? Not merely for their own sake but 
to teach them things that they might teach to the 
whole world. The darkness of their sufferings was 
for the light of the world. What kind of light ? The 
light of the One God who cares for all the world. 
During a thousand years the people of Judah had 
come to think that Yahweli cared for them, but the 
captivity led them to see that he cares also for all 
peoples and has especially prepared Judah to be a 
servant to all people, to teach them about God. 

Is it not wonderful that this prophet of the exile 
knows and rejoices in Cyrus the conqueror, yet does 
not desire to see Judah a conqueror? Who in the 
world ever before thought it a greater thing to be 
a servant than a conqueror? Indeed, this is the 
beginning of Judah’s great work for other nations. 
Up to this time the Hebrews have been like children 
getting their training in the home and in school but 
now Judah has grown to be a man with great ideas 
to give the world and is writing and speaking these 
ideas. To do this is far greater than to conquer all 
the richest cities in the world and to take all their 
treasures. To have discovered truth to give to 
others, is not this true wealth and true conquest? 


CHAPTER XXIX 


THE “REMNANT” REBUILDS THE 

TEMPLE 

Judah the Servant of the world was an idea too 
high for all the people in captivity. There were, of 
course, all kinds of people among them, some who 
would sacrifice everything for the right, some who 
were content to let things drift. Now, to the mind 
of the Prophet of the Exile, all Judah should become 
this Servant carrying light to the world. But as he 
preached he found some who did not see much in 
this idea. To such he spoke sharply to rouse them: 

Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see. 
Who is blind, but my Servant ? Or deaf, as my messenger 
that I send? Who is blind as he that is at peace with 
me, and blind as Yahweh’s servant? (Isa. 42:18, 19) 

This blindness of part of the people of Judah to 
their mission caused the Prophet to see that the true 
Servant of Yahweh was the part of Judah that did 
see and understand, those whom Isaiah had called 
The Holy Remnant. This “Remnant” had actually 
existed ever since the days of Isaiah. They had 
treasured the prophetic writings and ideals. They 
were young men who became disciples to the proph¬ 
ets, adopted their ideas and actually kept them from 

246 


“REMNANT” REBUILDS TEMPLE 247 


being lost and destroyed. At the time of the Exile 
Jeremiah and his group of disciples formed the Holy 
Remnant. Although Jeremiah did not go to Bab¬ 
ylon his disciples and his ideas did. The Prophet 
of the Exile also was one of this Holy Remnant and 
no doubt had disciples. In his book (Isaiah 40-55) 
he gives us a picture of this Holy Remnant as de¬ 
spised and rejected by his blind brothers and all 
the world for their sake. Those who had tortured 
him at last came to see that it was fcyr their sins 
that he suffered. The poem seems almost to be 
speaking of an individual. Perhaps the author is 
thinking of Jeremiah who was tortured by his own 
people for their sake, and who here stands as a rep¬ 
resentative of all the Holy Remnant. The main 
part of the poem is as follows: 

The Suffering Servant 

He was despised and rejected of men; 

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: 

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him; 

He was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

Surely he hath borne our griefs, 

And carried our sorrows: 

Yet we did esteem him, stricken, 

Smitten of God, and afflicted. 

But he was wounded for our transgressions, 

He was bruised for our iniquities: 

The chastisement of our peace was upon him, 

And with his stripes we are healed. 


248 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


All we, like sheep, have gone astray; 

We have turned every one to his own way; 

And Yahweh hath laid on him 

The iniquity of us all. 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, 

Yet he opened not his mouth: 

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, 

And as a sheep before her shearers, is dumb. 

He was taken from prison, and from judgment: 

And who shall declare his generation? 

For he was cut off out of the land of the living: 

For the transgression of my people was he stricken. 

(Isaiah 53: 3-8) 

The nobility of giving one’s life for others is what 
the w r riter of this poem glorifies. This Jeremiah the 
prophet had done, and his life was an example to 
those who were sacrificing much for Judah in cap¬ 
tivity. 

In the midst of Babylon it required some sacrifice 
to be true to Judah. Indeed, when Cyrus, the con¬ 
queror of Babylon, proclaimed that various peoples 
might return to their home lands there were not so 
many ready to return to Jerusalem as one would 
suppose. They had found ways to have such com¬ 
forts as they could not hope to have for a long time 
back in ruined Jerusalem. Hence it is probable that 
only a few prepared to take the long hard journey 
across the desert. Some thought, no doubt, that 
they would do better to stay in Babylon and give 


“REMNANT” REBUILDS TEMPLE 249 


food and provisions to those who went back to the 
Holy City. 

Our history concerning the “Return” is not clear 
in the old records, but probably a small company re¬ 
turned to Jerusalem in the year 537 b. c. Joshua, the 
High Priest, led the “Remnant” and there went 
with him a young prince named Zerubbabel, of 
the House of David. Of the few hundred people 
who went along, some would remember Jerusalem 
as it was but more would be waiting to get their first 
glimpse of holy Mount Zion. 

Their great desire would naturally be to rebuild 
the temple, and they probably made a beginning 
soon after arriving. But the difficulty of obtaining 
both materials and workers, was very great and 
little was actually accomplished for some years. 
People were so busy getting houses built for them¬ 
selves that the temple remained unbuilt. 

It was not until two prophets, Haggai and Zecha- 
riah, began to shame the people that they rose up 
and set to work in earnest on the temple. “Is it time 
for you, 0 ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and 
this house lie waste?” cried Haggai. “Be strong, 
O Zerubbabel, saith Yahweh; and be strong, O’ 
Joshua, the High Priest, and be strong, all ye people 
of the land, saith Yahweh, and work; for I am with 
you.” (Hag. 2:4) 

As the people went to work they began to look 
toward Zerubbabel as their king and to dream that 
he would restore the glory of the old days. Zecha- 
riah is probably thinking of him when he called some 


250 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


one “my servant the Branch’’ ( Zech . 3:8) This 
young prince of the House of David seemed like the 
new branch that comes forth from old roots in the 
spring time. Might not he be the one through 
whom the nation should again grow up? They even 
talked of crowns of silver and gold. (Zech. 6:11- 
15) But it is uncertain whether they dared to 
crown him king, since it might be considered trea¬ 
son by Darius who had now become their overlord 
after the death of Cyrus. 

But at last the temple was finished and the little 
group in Jerusalem was filled with joy. Out of this 
joy came many songs for the new temple which were 
then for the first time introduced into the service. 
Poets arose among the people, and musicians set 
their words to music. Some of these songs have 
been preserved in our book of the Psalms, which 
began to be collected at this time. 

Here, then, is the purified Judah, small and hard 
pressed by poverty; yet they are the Holy Remnant 
who will preserve the literature and the great princi¬ 
ples of Judah till opportunity comes to make them 
more widely known to the world. 


CHAPTER XXX 


NEHEMIAH, THE REBUILDER OF 

JERUSALEM 

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, 

And the glory of Yahweh is risen upon thee. 

The nations shall come to thy light, 

And kings to the brightness of thy rising. 

(Isa. 60: 1, 3) 

So proclaimed a prophet in Jerusalem not long 
after Zerubbabel and his followers succeeded in re¬ 
building the temple. Now is the important time, he 
cries, for us not to forget the great ideas of the 
prophets of the exile, for the prophesies are being 
fulfilled. Judah, the Servant, now speaks declaring 
that the time has come when he brings blessings 
to many. 

The Spirit of Yahweh God is upon me; 

Because Yahweh hath anointed me to preach good things 
unto the meek; 

He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 

To proclaim liberty to the captive, 

And the opening of the prison to them that are bound; 

To proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh. 

(Isa. 61: 1, 2) 

It is good to see that these splendid ideas of serv- 

251 


252 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


ice to the world lived’ in the newly built Jerusalem 
community although the people were destitute and 
hard-worked. The temple they had built was a poor 
affair beside the temple of Solomon which some 
could remember. These temple builders had not 
gold and silver in abundance but they had the glory 
of great ideas, and this made the temple again the 
center of their life. 

Sad to say, there is a break in the story here and 
we do not know what became of Zerubbabel. Was 
he removed by the Persian over-lord? Did he die? 
At any rate no more work seems to have been done 
on the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and when next 
we can pick up the story of Jerusalem in the book of 
Nehemiah there seems to be no ruler, and disorder 
reigns everywhere. About a hundred years after 
Zerubbabel, Nehemiah appears as a new leader for 
the Jerusalem community. How he came to this 
place let him tell us in his own words: 

The words of Nehemiah. ... It came to pass, as I was 
in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, 
came, he and certain men out of Judah; and I asked 
them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were 
left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And 
they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the cap¬ 
tivity there in the province are in great affliction and 
reproach; the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and 
the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it came to 
pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and 
wept, and mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed 
before the God of heaven. (Neh. 1:1-4) 


NEHEMIAH 


253 


Nehemiah was cup-bearer to the great Persian 
king in the palace at Shushan and always, when he 
lifted up the sparkling goblet to his royal highness, 
he lifted also a face beaming with cheeriness. But 
so deeply did he feel sorrow about the report of 
the bad condition of Jerusalem that one day his face 
was so sad that the king spoke to him. 

King: Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? 
This is nothing else but sorrow of heart. 

Nehemiah: Let the king live forever; why should not my 
countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ 
sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with 
fire? 

King: For what dost thou make request? 

Nehemiah: ( After a moment’s prayer) If it please the king, 
and if thy servant hast found favor in thy sight, that thou 
would’st send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers’ sepul¬ 
chres, that I may build it. 

King: ( After a few words with the queen, who has evidently 
been moved by Nehemiah’s words) For how long shall thy 
journey be? And when wilt thou return? 

Nehemiah: If it please the king let letters be given me to 
the governors beyond the river, that they may let me pass through 
till I come unto Judah. 

King: Go, and I will send with thee captains of the army and 
horsemen. 

Nehemiah: ( Bowing low and kissing the hem of the king’s 
garment, then rising) The hand of my God is good upon me. 
Farewell. ( Neh . 2: 1-8) 

Nehemiah was a man of action. Immediately he 
set out for Jerusalem. For three days after his 
arrival he examined the situation, and then in the 
night rode around the walls to see the exact com 


254 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


dition before he told any one who he was or why he 
had come. Then he told his brethren of his permit 
from the king to rebuild the battered walls. Full of 
joy they replied, “Let us arise and build.” (Neh. 
2:11-18) 

Now there were two wealthy men living outside 
Jerusalem, named Sanballat and Tobiah, who had 
long persecuted the little community in Jerusalem. 
They laughed at the attempts to rebuild the walls, 
saying, 

What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify them¬ 
selves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a 
day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of 
rubbish, seeing they are burned? . . . Even that which 
they build, if a fox go up, he shall break down their stone 
wall. (Neh. 4: 2, 3) What is this thing ye do? Will 
ye rebel against the king? (Neh. 2: 19) 

This charge of treason could be answered by show¬ 
ing Nehemiah’s permit from the king. And the 
answer to the scornful laughter was this: “The 
people had a mind to work.’ ’ (Neh. 4: 6) 

W 7 ith determination they were able to accomplish 
the well-nigh impossible. “Bearers of burdens’’ 
carried away the great masses of rubbish, probably 
in big baskets on their heads. Amazed and angered 
at the success of the workers in filling up great holes 
in the wall’s foundations, Sanballat and Tobiah de¬ 
termined to attack them. Nehemiah at once organ¬ 
ized a plan of defence. A trumpeter was stationed 


NEHEMIAH 


255 


to watch and a sword was girded on the side of each 
worker. Some also had spears and Nehemiah an¬ 
nounced to all: 

1 ‘ In what place soever ye hear the sound of the trumpet, 
resort ye thither unto us; our God shall fight for us.” 
(Neh. 4: 20) 

While they were overcoming their outside enemies 
by this splendid energy and the wall was growing 
higher every day, there rose a trouble within Jeru¬ 
salem. One day there was a tumult in the streets 
because certain rich Jews were trying to collect 
debts from the people who had been working on the 
walls without pay. Various voices in the crowd 
could be heard crying out: 

We, our sons and our daughters are many: let us get 
corn that we may eat and live. 

We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and 
our houses. 

Lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters, 
to be servants. 

Other men have our lands and our fields. (Neh. 5: 1-5) 

When Nehemiah heard these cries and saw that 
the rich were not willing to sacrifice for the building 
of the wall and were even taking away the lands and 
the children of the poor he was “very angry.” He 
called the rich nobles together and said to them: 

We after our ability have redeemed our brethren, the 
Jews, that were sold unto the heathen; and would ye even 


256 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


sell your brethren? Then held they their peace and found 
never a word. (Neh. 5: 8) 

These “nobles” were so ashamed of themselves 
that they promised to restore all they had taken and 
to charge no more usury. Then Nehemiah, who was 
undoubtedly wearing a long oriental gown, shook 
out his lap and said: 


So God shake out every man from his house, and from 
his labor, that performeth not this promise; even thus be 
he shaken out and emptied. And all the congregation said 
Amen, and praised Yahweh. (Neh. 5:13) 

Nehemiah did not merely call upon others to make 
sacrifices for the upbuilding of the walls, he used his 
own money to buy every day ‘ ‘ one ox and six choice 
sheep”; also other food for his table to which he 
invited many who were giving their time to building. 
(Neh, 5:17, 18) 

With such a strong efficient man among them it 
would not be surprising if many of the people 
wanted him to be their king and probably wondered 
if he might not be the expected Messiah. A letter 
which Sanballat sent to Nehemiah accuses him of 
appointing prophets to preach that he was to be 
king. This Nehemiah denies and certainly his 
whole conduct shows that he had no idea of becom¬ 
ing king, which would have been treason to his Per¬ 
sian emperor. 

His enemies tried to get Nehemiah to come down 


NEHEMIAH 


257 


into the plain of Ono for a conference, but he would 
not fall into their traps. When some one tried to 
frighten him into thinking that he was about to be 
captured by his enemies and urged that he flee to 
the temple, he replied: “Why should such a man 
as I flee? ... I will not go in.” (Neh. 6:1-11) 
This reply shows Nehemiah to be a man who was 
not afraid, who had nothing to hide and would not 
skulk about. His purposes were open and sincere; 
and for this reason as well as because he was such 
a masterful leader of the workers, the wall was 
finished in fifty-two days. A great piece of work 
was thus accomplished; but even more important 
than the work was the spirit in which it was done. 
Again people’s hopes arose. Sometimes hope means 
more to the upbuilding of a state than walls. 

At the dedication of the walls there was great re¬ 
joicing as singers from the temple and from the 
region round Jerusalem marched on the walls chant¬ 
ing psalms of thanksgiving. Perhaps the first Book 
of Psalms was collected for use at this time. Also 
it is probable that parts of the Book of the Law were 
read at this time for Nehemiah was anxious when 
he went back to his Persian king to leave a purified 
community. He it was who began collecting the 
library of the Jews which afterwards became our 
Bible. Some of the sacred books were still in 
Babylon and some of these priceless rolls individuals 
had brought back with them for the temple. 

Another thing Nehemiah did was to make a rule 
that no one could marry outside the Jerusalem com- 


258 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


munity. Those who had done so must put away 
their wives. Everybody was ordered to be more 
careful about keeping the Sabbath also. Thus 
Nehemiah tried to build up the wall of the law to 
keep Judah pure; then he traveled back to report 
to his king. 

Nehemiah was thus the reconstructor of Judah not 
only physically but spiritually. He left a Judah 
full of joy and determination to prepare for still 
greater days ahead. 


CHAPTER XXXI 

ATTEMPTS TO GAIN NEW FREEDOM 

Literature gives voice to the soul of a people. 
The Hebrews learned by their experiences, es¬ 
pecially during the exile, to express themselves in 
various forms of literature. We find, therefore, 
that their people often express their protests against 
wrongs in song or story. A good story is often 
more powerful in righting a wrong than a law. A 
story protesting against a law is the little book of 
Ruth, which is really one of the earliest known 
novels. It puts itself far back in the time of the 
Judges, just as novel writers today often like to 
make believe they are writing in an early time. But 
the purpose of the writer is to correct some of the 
bad effects following from Nehemiah’s law T s. In 
order to be holy must Hebrew people never marry 
people of other races! So Nehemiah’s law had de¬ 
creed. But the writer of Ruth says, No, love is 
greater than law, as I will show you by the story of 
Ruth the Moabitess whose love for her husband's 
mother brought her to Bethlehem, where she became 
the wife of a Hebrew and an ideal mother and wor¬ 
shiper of Yahweh. (Read the book of Ruth if the 
story is not entirely familiar.) The author prob¬ 
ably knew cases where families had been cruelly 

259 


260 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


separated by rigid adherence to law (see Deut. 23: 3, 
and Nehemiah 13: 23 £), when the real spirit of the 
law—to make a holy people—would have been better 
fulfilled by allowing the people who loved each other 
and Yahweh, to remain together. The book of Ruth 
is, then, an attempt to gain true freedom in connec¬ 
tion with the law. 

You all know the story of Jonah and the whale. 
This is another story written by some one who 
wanted to ask for more kindness to aliens. It is 
not the fish that is the center of this story but the 
heathen. The author did not mean us to think so 
much about the fish as about the thousands of people 
outside of Israel who would be destroyed if no 
prophet would go to them. The last words of the 
book give us the purpose of the author: 

Shall I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city, 
wherein are more than six score thousand persons that can¬ 
not discern between their right hand and their left hand, 
and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:11) 

Why was Jonah ‘ 4 very angry’’ when Yahweh re¬ 
fused to destroy the city of Nineveh, that is, people 
outside Israel? Because he was a narrow patriot 
who had his eyes on his own country only and 
would not remember that aliens are also people. 
The author pictures the sailors in the boat as sorry 
to cast Jonah into the sea. They were kind men 
who “rowed hard” to bring the boat to land and 
only at the request of Jonah did they finally throw 


ATTEMPTS TO GAIN FREEDOM 261 


him overboard. Then they made vows to Yahweh. 
They were not bad men though they were aliens. 
(Read Jonah 1: 4-17) 

This story shows, then, that the Hebrews in their 
reconstructed city were growing narrow and forget¬ 
ting the ideas of their mission to the world. Had 
they not, in captivity, learned that they were to be¬ 
come a ‘‘light to the Gentiles 

But events far away again changed everything 
for the little commonwealth and compelled them to 
think about the Gentiles. Greece arose and dis¬ 
puted the right of the Persians to control, and out 
of their war there came forth Alexander the Great 
who became the ruler of the whole civilized world. 
An old story says that when he came to Jerusalem, 
the high-priest put on his beautiful robes and went 
out to welcome the great conqueror. The people 
knew that they could not stand in the way of Alex¬ 
ander, so thev welcomed him and soon found them- 
selves surrounded with Greek civilization. This 
meant that Greek temples and gymnasia were built 
in the towns and that Greek traders came every¬ 
where with their wares. All this mixing of ideas 
and customs was good for both Jews and Gentiles, 
and all went well until some years after Alexander ’s 
death. Then a narrow-minded ruler began to de¬ 
prive the Jews of their liberty and to demand that 
everything Hebrew should be thrown away. It is 
strange that people of different religions and races 
do not learn that they can help each other and live 
happily together only if they will give each other 


262 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


freedom. It was a man named Antiochus Epiph- 
anes who put the kingdom of Judah under the iron 
rule of oppression because he wanted to make it 
Greek. His agents robbed and killed the people. 

They shed innocent blood on every side of the sanctuary, 
and defiled the sanctuary. And the inhabitants of Jeru¬ 
salem fled because of them. . . . Her feasts were turned 
into mourning, her sabbaths into reproach, her honor into 
contempt. (7 Mac. 1: 37-39.) 

All over the land were placed Greek altars and 
all Jews were ordered to sacrifice to Zeus and other 
Greek gods. Think what this meant to Jews who 
from childhood had been trained to be true to Yah- 
weh only and to study and keep the sacred law. 
Think of the terrible choice that many a young man 
had to make—to eat unclean meat offered to idols 
or to die. 

And many in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed 
in themselves not to eat unclean things. And they chose 
to die that they might not be defiled with the meats, and 
that they might not profane the holy covenant: and they 
died. (7 Mac. Is 62, 63.) 

A wave of horror passed through Israel when 
Antiochus set up an altar to Zeus in the temple and 
offered swine upon it. This was henceforth re¬ 
ferred to as the “abomination of desolation.” (I 
Mac . 1: 54, Dan. 11:31) 

Such measures were gradually driving the people 
to desperation. Would Israel give up her holy 



ATTEMPTS TO GAIN FREEDOM 263 


books just because it was cause for death to be 
found with one? No, the Hebrews were of stronger 
stuff than that; at last they revolted. 

It was in a little village of Modin that the Greek 
officers ordered Mattathias, the father of five sons, 
to sacrifice to the gods. 

And Mattathias answered and said with a loud voice, If 
all the nations that are in the house of the king’s dominion 
hearken unto him, yet will I and my sons and my brethren 
walk in the covenant of our fathers. (7 Mac. 2:19, 20) 

Then a Jew was seen coming forward to sacrifice 
and this filled Mattathias with such wrath that he 
killed the Jew and the king’s officer and pulled down 
the altar and shouted, 

Whosoever is jealous for the law, and maintaineth the 
covenant, let him come forth after me. And he and his 
friends fled into the mountains, and forsook all that they 
had in the city. (7 Mac. 2: 27, 28) 

To the leader in the wilderness flocked hundreds 
of devout souls who were willing to face dangers for 
the sake of remaining true to the law. They must 
have had to sleep in caves and such places as they 
could find amongst the rocks, and food must have 
been scarce. But when men care greatly for doing 
the right they endure hardships gladly. Mattathias 
and his friends went forth into the towns and pulled 
down the Greek altars and everywhere gave courage 
to the Hebrews. When the old father, Mattathias, 
died, his son Judas became leader and because he 


264 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


was “strong and mighty” he was called Maccabeus, 
which means hammer. 

Antiochus was so furiously angry that these Jews 
should dare to disregard his commands that he 
gathered his army together to crush them. When 
Judas and his little company saw the army coming 
they said, 

What? Shall we be able, being a small company, to 
fight against so great and strong a multitude? and we for 
our part are faint, having tasted no food this day. But 
Judas said, They come upon us in the fulness of insolence 
and lawlessness to destroy us and our wives and our 
children, to spoil us: let us fight for our lives and our 
laws. Be ye not afraid of them. (1 Mac. 3: 17-22) 

Then they leapt suddenly upon their enemies and 
drove them away defeated. This happened again 
and again until, to the astonishment of every one, 
Judas finally entered Jerusalem, purged it of for¬ 
eign soldiers and became the head of a new and 
independent Jewish kingdom. This is one of the 
notable cases in history where the few who were 
right have put to rout the many who were wrong. 
The temple was at once purified and a new altar 
built to take the place of the one on which the 
“abomination of desolation” had been offered. 
Imagine with what joy and devotion the people 
found themselves again in their holy temple! A 
great feast of rejoicing was held and all the centu¬ 
ries since that year — 165 b. c.— the Jewish people 
have celebrated that feast. (I Mac. 4: 41-61) Judas 






ATTEMPTS TO GAIN FREEDOM 265 

is one of the great warrior heroes, not only of Israel, 
but of the world. He won victories for a great 
cause and never was untrue to that cause. For nine 
years he ruled in Israel, most of the time with 
his sword in his hand, and he finally fell in battle. 

Terrible persecution returned after the death of 
Judas. The brothers of Judas ruled, but they were 
not as strong or as fine in their purpose as Judas 
and the people were again robbed and killed by 
successors to Antiochus, who had died. About the 
time of the victory of Judas a book was written to 
encourage people to be true in spite of persecution, 
the book of Daniel. The story of Daniel in the 
lion’s den was meant to teach young people to do 
right and expect God to care for them. Another 
part of the book pictures the great powers that have 
surrounded and ruled Judah as great beasts. Look 
at Chapter 7 of Daniel; here each beast stands for 
the following powers: 

Four beasts come up from the sea diverse one from another. 

1. The first was like a lion—Babylon. 

2. Another beast like to a bear—Media. 

3. Lo, another like a leopard—Persia. 

4. A fourth beast, terrible and powerful—Greece. 

5. The little horn—Antiochus. 

(See Daniel 7: 4-8) 

Is this not a strange way to write history? It 
was the way that had to be taken in times of per¬ 
secution when anything written against the govern¬ 
ment would be punished. 


266 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


Finally, one of the Maccabaean brothers came to 
the head of the nation who was stronger than the 
others, Simon, who was made high-priest and king. 
Under him the little kingdom enjoyed full independ¬ 
ence of outside powers for a brief period. The 
Jewish historian remembers this period as one of 
peace and joy. 

They tilled their land in peace, and the land gave her 
increase, and the trees of the plains their fruit. The 
ancient men sat in the streets, they communed all of them 
together of good things, and the young men put on glo¬ 
rious and warlike apparel. And there ceased in the land 
any that fought against them: and he (Simon) strength¬ 
ened all those of his people who were brought low: the 
law he searched out, and every lawless and wicked person 
he took away. (7 Mac. 14: 8-14) 

The attempts for freedom resulted, then, in a re¬ 
vival of a Jewish kingdom almost beyond the dreams 
of the most hopeful. Never could the happiness 
of this period be forgotten; never could the faith 
of true Jews fail, remembering how marvelously vic¬ 
tory had come to the Maccabaean brothers. Hence¬ 
forth faith and hope lived in many breasts however 
dark might be their surroundings. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERISHABLE 

HOPE 

Hope is an important factor in the building of a 
nation. Men will endure any hardships for a 
cause if sustained by hope of success in the end. 
Probably the successes of the Maecabaean brothers 
were largely due to the faith and hope kept alive by 
the books that were being written in Judah. Indeed, 
there came to be a special class of books devoted to 
keeping alive JudalPs courage. These have been 
called “apocalyptic books.” This name comes 
from* the Greek word which means to uncover, and 
was applied to these books because they always 
sought to uncover the future of the world and show 
how success would finally come. 

One such book was written just before the Mac- 
cabaeans struck for liberty. It is called the Book of 
Enoch, for the authors (it is certain that there were 
several) would not have dared to use their own 
names lest Antiochus, the terrible persecutor, should 
put them to death. Enoch seemed a good name to 
use because he is mentioned in the old Hebrew rec¬ 
ords as a man worthy of receiving the secrets of 
God: “Enoch walked with God: and he was not, 

for God took him. ” (Gen. 5: 24) The book speaks 

267 


268 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


of Enoch as taken about by an angel and shown the 
secrets of the future. These writers picture a dark 
time of tribulation which they themselves are endur¬ 
ing, to be followed by the overthrow of the wicked 
and the coming of a happy day. It was the glowing 
pictures of this happy age that kept the hope of the 
people alive in the dark times. Listen to one of the 
pictures of joy to come: 

And in those days will the mountains leap like rams 
and the hills will skip like lambs satisfied with milk, and 
they will all become angels in heaven. Their faces will 
be lighted up with joy because in those days the Elect 
One has appeared, and the earth will rejoice, and the 
righteous will dwell upon it, and the elect will go to 
and fro upon it. . . . And I asked the angel who went 
with me, saying, What things are these which I have seen 
in secret? And he said unto me, All these things which 
thou hast seen serve the dominion *of His Anointed (Mes¬ 
siah) that he may be potent and mighty on the earth. 
(Enoch 51: 4; 52: 4) 1 

Not only is there a looking forward to a future 
happy time but to a fiuture perfect ruler,—the Elect 
One, the Messiah,—that is, The Anointed One. The 
hope for an ideal king comes from Isaiah’s dreams 
and has gradually grown stronger and more definite 
since his day. Another name given to the king, in 
these later times, was ‘Son of Man. The following 
passage shows him with God, the Head of Days: 

i See The Booh of Enoch by R. H. Charles. 


GROWTH OF IMPERISHABLE HOPE 269 


And there I saw One who had a head of days, and his 
head was white like wool, and with him was another be¬ 
ing whose countenance had the appearance of a man and 
his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. 
And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me 
all the hidden things, concerning the Son of Man, who he 
was, and whence he was, and why he went with the Head 
of Days ? And he answered and said unto me, This is the 
Son of Man who hath righteousness. And this Son of 
Man whom thou hast seen will arouse the kings and the 
mighty ones from their couches and the strong from their 
thrones. (Enoch 46 :1-4) 

A question that arose in dark days of persecution 
was this: Will those who have been killed by 
wicked rulers have their part in the glorious age of 
the Messiah, the Son of Man? The writer of Daniel 
was the first to try to answer this by saying that the 
dead should some day come to life: 

Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and 
everlasting contempt. {Dan. 12:2) 

The Enoch writers also spoke thus: 

In those days the earth will also give back those who 
are treasured up within it. {Enoch 51:1) 

After the dead had come to life there was to be 
a Judgment Day in which the records of the lives 
of all people would be judged. Then the righteous 
would be made happy either on the earth or in the 


270 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


heavens and the wicked given terrible punishments. 
One passage says they are to be cast into fire: 

I looked and turned to another part of the earth and 
saw a deep valley with burning fire. And they brought 
the kings and the mighty and put them into this deep 
valley. (Enoch 54:1, 2) 

Not only wicked people are to be tormented with 
fir’e but it was believed that there were many demons 
who would be bound with “iron chains of immeasur¬ 
able weight’’ and cast into a dark abyss. (Enoch 
54:3, 4) 

An idea that we find throughout these books is 
that the world is full of spirits who take charge of 
all things. For instance, there is a spirit of the sea 
who holds it ba*ck and drives it forth as though it 
were a horse. There is a spirit which keeps the 
thunder and lightning in their proper places: 

For when the lightning lightens, the thunder utters its 
voice, and the spirit enforces a pause during the peal, 
and divides equally between them; for the treasury of 
their peals is inexhaustible, and each one as it peals is 
held in with a bridle, and turned back by the power of 
the spirit. (Enoch 60:15) 

Does it seem strange that the Hebrews should 
come to believe in spirits and demons !• They are 
somewhat like the fairies and goblins of our fairy 
books. We remember, too, that long ago, in the 
desert, the Hebrews had thought that there were 
gods for every tree and spring. But the belief in 
angels and spirits is different, for they now know 


GROWTH OF IMPERISHABLE HOPE 271 


there is but one God and they are trying to find out 
how he does all the work in his world. They are no 
longer children but are beginning to be scientific.' 
When they try to explain how it is that there is a 
pause between the lightning and the thunder they 
are trying to solve the problem that it has taken 
many years to answer. We now say that the light¬ 
ning cuts the air asunder and that it takes some time 
for the sound of its coming together again to reach 
us. But there is probably much about the explana¬ 
tion that we do not yet know. Each age looks back 
on the explanations of the previous age with amuse¬ 
ment. And there is certainly much that we do not 
know about the other problems the Hebrews were 
trying to solve. How is it that some of the wicked 
do not seem to be punished here 1 Will they be 
punished after death? But it is a fine thing to keep 
asking questions about all things we do not know. 
Only questioners can grow to know the truth! 

We cannot help being sorry to see among these 
Jews a growing desire to see the wicked punished 
so cruelly. It is one thing to feel that wickedness 
should receive the just punishment naturally flowing 
out of it and another thing to rejoice in seeing the 
wicked suffer. The growth of the idea of a hell with 
everlasting fire and terrible torments was not one 
of the noblest things of this period. We shall have 
to say the same of a certain bitter hatred for Gen¬ 
tiles. It is not strange that people should hate their 
oppressors, but hatred is always degrading. 

One interesting book of this period which is 


272 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


spoiled by its expression of hatred of the Gentiles 
is the book of Esther . The beautiful thing in this 
familiar story is that Esther is willing to risk her 
life to save her people; the ugly part of the story is 
that Esther used her triumph to secure a decree for 
the Jews to massacre their enemies. (Esther 9: 
15-18) It was not strange that a nation that had 
grown up through such hard experiences of exile 
and oppression should develop both good and bad 
qualities. But the marvelous thing is that the Jews 
developed so much that is good. The bad, the nar¬ 
rowness and hatred, the world needs to outgrow; 
but the hope in a better age to come, and the willing¬ 
ness to sacrifice everything for that age of justice, 
is something the world needs and values today. 

During the Maccabaean age people hoped that the 
glorious era was almost here, but they grew more 
and more disappointed as they saw their ruling 
family quarreling among themselves. Finally this 
resulted in the inviting in of another great power 
which soon became their master. This was Rome, 
which had overthrown the Greek kingdoms and or¬ 
ganized them all into the Roman Empire. It was 
Pompey, the great Roman general, who gladly took 
the chance offered him by the quarrels of the Mac- 
cabaeans to gain control of Judea. For three 
months he besieged the temple and finally took it on 
a sacred feast day, and killed the priests at the altar. 
He carried off Aristobulus, the young Maccabaean 
ruler, to march as a captive in his triumphal pro¬ 
cession in Rome. Again the hearts of the Hebrews 


GROWTH OF IMPERISHABLE HOPE 273 


sank in despair, for onoe more they found them¬ 
selves in the grip of a foreign power. After nearly 
a hundred years of independence it was more bitter 
than ever to find the strong hand of a foreigner 
making laws for them. But the marvelous thing 
about the Hebrews is that no persecution overcomes 
them; always hope springs up anew. 

So we find the Roman period to be the age in which 
the hope of the Messiah and the golden age shines 
strongest. A new party of the Pharisees had grown 
up who said that if the people would but keep the 
law perfectly, the new age would soon dawn. These 
Pharisees were, at first, enthusiastic young men 
who separated themselves (the name Pharisee 
comes from a verb meaning to separate) from those 
who were careless about the law. These zealous 
young men wrote the Psalms of Solomon , sometimes 
called the Psalms of the Pharisees just after the 
death of Pompey, who had again desecrated the 
temple. They rejoiced that an evil power was over¬ 
thrown and prayed for the quick coming of the King 
Messiah: 

Behold, 0 Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the 
son of David, 

He shall glorify the Lord in a place to be seen of the whole 
earth, 

And he shall purge Jerusalem and make it holy, even as 
it was in the days of old, 

A righteous king and taught of God is he that reigneth 
over them; 

And there shall be no iniquity in his days in their midst, 


274 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


for all shall be holy and their king is the Lord Mes¬ 
siah. 

Psalms of the Pharisees 1 Ode 17. 

Thus we can see how the Hebrews have attained 
to an imperishable hope which exile, persecution, 
and apparent failure cannot take away from them. 
This hope can hold them together and sustain them 
when all the world is against them. 

1 See Ryle and James’ Psalms of the Pharisees. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


THE HEBREWS GIVE THEIR IDEALS 

TO THE WORLD 

Had it not been for their power of looking to the 
future the Hebrew people would have felt discour¬ 
aged as they not only found themselves under the 
rule of the Romans, but that even their everyday 
affairs were controlled by some Arabians. It was 
the last weak members of the Maccabaean house who 
sold themselves to a wily Idumean, named Anti¬ 
pater, because he could help them get money. But 
what he cared about was power to make his sons 
rulers of Palestine and this power he acquired. The 
most interesting and best known of these sons was 
Herod. The story of this son is one of the most 
dramatic in all history. 

We first meet Herod as a fifteen-year old boy 
appointed ruler of Galilee by his father. One of the 
first things he did was to go to the rocky hills of 
Galilee and hunt out “robbers.” Josephus, the 
Jewish historian says, 

“As he was a youth of great mind, he presently 
met with an opportunity of signalizing his courage; 
for finding there was one Hezekiah, a captain of 
a band of robbers, who overran the neighboring 

parts of Syria with a great troop of them, he seized 

275 


276 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


him and slew him, as well as a great number of the 
other robbers that were with him. ’ ’ 1 

Now there is something strange about these ‘ 4 rob¬ 
bers,’ ’ for it pleased the Romans to have them killed, 
but it did not please the Jews who had kept to them¬ 
selves the right to pronounce the death sentence. 
The wives and mothers of these men who were 
killed went to the chief men in Jerusalem and 
begged that Herod be tried for this deed and they 
promised to punish him. This makes it probable 
that these men who had been living out in the 
wilderness were not robbers at all, but some of 
the Hebrew people who could not bear to see 
their country degraded by these outsiders. Per¬ 
haps they hoped to drive them out as Judas Macca- 
baeus had done; at any rate they preferred to live 
in the desert till better times appeared. 

The Jerusalem Council, called the Sanhedrin, tried 
Herod for the murder of the robber, Hezekiah. But 
he appeared before them clothed in purple, sur¬ 
rounded by armed men, and the Sanhedrin did not 
dare condemn him, especially as the Romans ordered 
them to acquit him. One is not surprised, then, to 
learn that the bold young man Herod determined 
to be king of the Jews in Palestine, no matter how 
much he was hated. When feeling was so strong 
against him that he had to flee, he started for Rome, 
to find Mark Antony. When he could find no boat, 
he built one, and after overcoming many difficulties 
he at last found himself face to face with Antony, 

1 See Josephus, Autobiography, 14:19, 


HEBREWS GIVE IDEALS TO WORLD 277 

who was so impressed by his power and resource¬ 
fulness that he gladly made him king. But how was 
this king to win his kingdom? He secured some 
Roman soldiers and started back to tight his way to 
his throne. He tried to enter Galilee but the Gali¬ 
leans whom he had fought before were too strong 
for him now and shut him out of his kingdom. 

There was a beautiful girl named Mariamne, a 
descendant of the Maccabaean brothers. Herod 
knew it would make more Jews willing to receive 
him if he married her. It was this marriage and 
Herod’s unconquerable determination that finally 
won Palestine. Once within the walls of Jerusalem, 
he took possession of everything with a strong hand. 
Indeed, the love of power which had given him suc¬ 
cess soon began to be his undoing. So jealous was 
he of those about him who might rise to any popu¬ 
larity that he found ways of putting them to death. 
Gradually, most of his own household were put out 
of the way, and finally the jealous court women cast 
suspicion upon Mariamne. She seems to have been 
a truly beautiful character and Herod deeply loved 
her. That love might have raised his life to nobility 
but Herod, in a moment of rage at false reports, 
ordered her executed. Then he nearly went mad as 
he realized what he had done. The rest of his life 
was one of remorse and of degrading attempts to 
increase his power. The important thing that he 
did for Jerusalem was to rebuild and beautify it; 
Greek architecture appeared everywhere, and great 
fortifications. So massively did he construct things 


278 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


that they stood for the centuries. Part of the 
army barracks which the British took from the 
Turks in the war of 1914—1916 was a fortification 
built by Herod the Great. 

An important work that Herod did for the Jewish 
people was the rebuilding of the temple. They 
forced him to keep the Holy of Holies just as it was 
in the old temple but he enlarged and beautified the 
outer portions. By adding a great courtyard sur¬ 
rounded by cloisters he gave opportunity for a 
university, and teachers soon gathered here with 
their pupils about them. The story of Herod’s life 
shows that he had no understanding of the things 
that were of deepest interest to the Hebrews but he 
did not hinder them so long as they did not talk 
revolt. Thus it came about that Jerusalem became 
the center for the study of the Hebrew literature. 
Famous teachers expounded the Jewish law in the 
temple cloisters. Two famous teachers were Hillel 
and Shammai. The difference in their explanations 
of the law is shown in the following story: 

A stranger once “came to Shammai to be con¬ 
verted provided that he could be taught the whole 
Torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai beat 
him away. Then he went to Hillel, who said, What 
is hateful to thyself do not to thy fellow; this is the 
whole Torah, (Hebrew word for law) and the rest is 
commentary; go, study. ’ ’ 1 

Shammai beat the questioner because he believed 
in keeping the letter of the law without asking any 

i Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 23, note 33. Taylor. 


HEBREWS GIVE IDEALS TO WORLD 279 

questions, while Hillel tried to see the great prin¬ 
ciples underneath the details. These teachers were 
Pharisees; and one sad thing about the Pharisees 
was that many of them did not see the real meaning 
of the Law. They thought it was more wicked to 
lift up a “burden” on the Sabbath than to take 
away a widow’s house, if they could manage to do it 
without breaking the letter of the law. 

Opposed to the Pharisees were the Sadducees who 
stood by Herod and the Romans and were, therefore, 
wealthy and powerful. In both parties there were 
scribes who copied and explained the law but most 
scribes were Pharisees because it was the Pharisees 
who kept the Hebrew ideals alive and so cared most 
to read and copy the books. They read to the people 
the passages about the coming of the Messiah in the 
Psalms of Solomon, also called the Psalms of the 
Pharisees, and in the apocalyptic books. They 
could never be content to consider the ambitious, 
cruel Herod as the rightful ruler of their holy land. 
They pointed always to the future when the ideal 
ruler and teacher of the Jews should appear. 

No doubt many of the people who had gone out 
into the desert, to get away from the Herods and 
from the Romans were also people who were praying 
and hoping daily for the coming of the true kingdom. 
Imagine, then, the excitement when, a few years 
after the old Herod had died and left his kingdom 
to his sons, word went out that a man of the desert 
was “preaching in the wilderness of Judea,” saying, 


‘‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 


280 


FROM DESERT TO TEMPLE 


As a sign that it was necessary to be clean in heart 
in order to have a part in the kingdom he dipped 
them into water and called it a “baptism of repent¬ 
ance. ” He, too, pointed to a coming Messiah who 
should not baptize in water but “in the Holy 
Spirit. ” (Mk. 1:1—7. Matt. 3:1-2) 

One young man who heard of this wilderness 
preacher was Jesus, son of a carpenter in Nazareth. 
He was so much impressed by John the Baptist that 
he not only was baptized but began proclaiming the 
kingdom, too, and called upon people to “Believe 
the Good News.” (Mk. 1:15) 

One Sabbath day Jesus stood up in the synagogue 
in Capernaum by the Lake of Galilee and taught. 

And they were astonished at his teaching. They were 
all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among them¬ 
selves, saying, What is this? A new teaching! (Mark 
1:27) 

What was so astonishing about his teaching? 
That question it will take at least another year of 
study to answer, and it would require all one’s life¬ 
time to reach an understanding of the marvelous 
personality of Jesus of Nazareth. In him we meet 
the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, the one who 
gathers up all the best that had been developed by 
the Hebrew people from the days in the desert and 
gives it forth in his teaching and in his life. The 
justice which Amos preached; the tender forgive¬ 
ness of Hosea; the holiness and righteousness of 
Isaiah; the tragic sorrow of Jeremiah over a wicked 


HEBREWS GIVE IDEALS TO WORLD 281 

and stupid Jerusalem, Jesus seems to have felt him¬ 
self. Moreover, he saw, as Jeremiah had, that the 
future of the Hebrews did not depend on their city 
or their land but on their ideals. Like the second 
Isaiah he saw that the Hebrews were to be a “ Light 
to the Gentiles” and this could not depend upon any 
land or buildings but upon ideas. So he spoke con¬ 
stantly of God, the Father, in order that they might 
carry light everywhere. 

But the Pharisees and Sadducees were so shut up 
to the letter of the law that they could not see that 
Jesus was carrying out its true spirit and fulfilling 
some of their hopes of a leader who would lead the 
world in ideals, not in military power. Thus they 
refused to listen to Jesus as a prophet of God and 
finally caused him to be put to death. But they 
could not kill his ideas nor the memory of his life. 
The common people had heard him gladly and their 
friendship with him had made new men and women 
of them, so that they went out everywhere and pro¬ 
claimed that Jesus was the long expected Messiah, 
the Christ. Everywhere as they taught, people 
freed themselves from the bondage of the law and 
lived on the idea of love to all. With such ideals, 
these common people eventually overturned the 
world. The Hebrews who scattered over the world 
after the final destruction of Jerusalem carried some 
of their ideas abroad, but chiefly it was Jesus and 
the early Christians who completed the work of the 
heroic people of Israel to give the idea of God the 
Father to all the world. 
























































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